The Evolution of Pitcher Usage - Blake Snell

by Lincoln Mitchell

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NOTE - This article comes from Lincoln Mitchell's Substack page, Kibitzing with Lincoln . Please click HERE to follow Lincoln on Substack.

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The Tampa Bay Rays were trailing three games to two as game six of the 2020 World Series began, but they had their ace, Blake Snell, going for them against the Dodgers that night. Through five innings, Snell was dealing. He had struck out nine and allowed only one Dodger to reach base, giving up a lone single to Chris Taylor in the third. Moreover, he had done this throwing fewer than 70 pitches.

With one out in the sixth, Snell, pitching with a 1-0 lead, gave up another single, this time to Austin Barnes, and then was lifted in favor of a reliever. The Dodgers scored three runs that inning and won the game by a score of 3-1 to secure their first World Series championship since 1981. Rays manager Kevin Cash was deservedly criticized for his decision, but pulling Snell at that point, just as he was about to face the top of the Dodgers lineup for the third time and as his pitch count was creeping up reflected the way starting pitchers are used in this decade.

Snell has appeared in 213 big league games, all as a starting pitcher and has exactly one complete game. In other words, he has won more Cy Young Awards as a starting pitcher, two, than the total number of complete games he has pitched. In both Snell’s Cy Young winning seasons he averaged just under six innings per start. Those are pretty good indicators of the state of pitching, particularly starting pitching, in the 2020s.

In today’s game a pitcher who makes it through six innings is considered to have gone deep into the game. Deep is a relative term, but defining it as six innings indicates that complete games have become a freak event-there were only 28 in all of MLB last year and ten so far in 2025 as the season is just over a third over.

Snell has spent majority of his career, and won one of his Cy Young Awards, with the Rays, a team that pioneered the use of an opener. An opener usually only pitches one or two innings at the beginning of the game before giving way to a series of relievers. Openers are generally used only when none of the regular starters are able to pitch on a given day. The strategy has fallen out of fashion somewhat, but reflects the constant innovation that has long defined pitcher usage.

One of the notable things about the current era that differentiates pitcher usage from even a few decades ago is that in it very common to use as many four to six pitchers to get through a nine inning game. For example, on Sunday June 1st of this year, 16 teams used four pitchers, six used five and two used six. These numbers are even more striking because the absurd Little League rule about starting each extra inning with a runner on second base means that there are many fewer long extra inning games than in the past.

The table below compares the data from 2024, 2004 and 1984 and shows how over the last forty years, games with four or more pitchers per team have gone from being relatively rare, to occurring more in more than half of all games. Similarly, while forty years ago, teams used six or more pitchers only two or three times a years, today that is ten times as common.

The trend of asking fewer innings from starting pitchers and using more pitchers to get through a game captures one of the paradoxes of baseball analytics. From a strategic perspective, this approach is entirely defendable. The data about pitchers struggling to get through the order the third time is clear. Similarly, using fresh arms and getting the best matchups between pitchers and hitters to make it through the second half of the game is smart, but there is more to it than this.

A tradeoff has been made between the best strategy and the best baseball product. Starting pitchers, particularly the best starting pitchers, are among the most exciting of players. In some respects, starting pitchers are the protagonist of each game. If those protagonists rarely make it two-thirds of the way through the game, then the story is not as good.

For much of big league history, a great pitching matchup generated excitement, even in an otherwise unimportant game. In the early twentieth century a Giants-Cubs game was even more dramatic if Christy Mathewson was going up against Mordecai Brown. By mid-century a Bob Feller-Hal Newhouser match-up, or a few years later Sandy Koufax against Juan Marichal, were met with great anticipation from fans.

When I was growing up, if I knew Vida Blue was pitching against another top National League starter like Tom Seaver, Steve Carlton or Don Sutton, I had a little more bounce in my step as I walked into Candlestick Park. Today it is different. After all, how much does a Blake Snell (if he is healthy enough to pitch any time soon) Kodai Senga game mean to fans if they know neither pitcher is likely to make it through the sixth, even if they are throwing well. Another way to think about it is seeing one pitcher strike out 12 players is impressive, seeing four or five pitchers combine to do that means little.

Snell is an excellent pitcher playing in an environment that is very different than that of other starting pitchers even 20 years ago, let alone anytime when starting pitchers still finished more than half their games. His career is a reflection of just how much pitcher usage has evolved, but it will also continue to change. Six man rotations, developing middle reliever that pitch two to four innings, even developing more two-way players are all part of the next frontier for pitcher usage.

I miss the days of complete games, but look forward to seeing the next wave of innovations and changes in how starters and relief pitchers are used.