Padres Cy Young Pitcher Reflects on Best 2023 Outing So Far
Blake Snell has been taking it pretty rough from the fanbase during this stretch of his 2023 campaign with the San Diego Padres. He was granted the honor of being the opening day pitcher due to the absences of Yu Darvish and Joe Musgrove, only to throw far too many pitches in a short amount of innings and get pulled early in the loss.
However, he was finally able to make it through six innings in Tuesday night's win over the Cincinnati Reds and it's a nice step in the right direction for him. Snell was initially brought in by the Friars back in 2020 to strengthen the pitching rotation and in a year like this one, his production serves to be ultra-important.
It was a rough adjustment period in the first month of this season for the Padres and their batters struggled the entire time to bring in runs. This is where the importance of someone like Snell comes in because majority of their hopes of winning the games then falls on him and the rest of the pitchers. In the win against the Reds, he soured that 67 of his 101 pitches were strikes and allowed only three runs.
But he knows he still has a long way to go.
“I feel good,” said Snell. “So now it’s more I want results, and chasing them is not beneficial at all. So me being frustrated with that isn’t going to help me get better tomorrow. So I’ll get over that and find out what I need to do better.”
(Via The San Diego-Union Tribune)
It is a great sign nonetheless to see our Friars getting everything together right now. They are still far from perfect or final form but if there was any month to struggle, it was that first one.
