Molly Knight and I are going live at 8 p.m. Eastern tonight as part of our Joy of Baseball Project. This will be right at the start of Dodgers-Brewers Game 4, and we’ll talk about the Guardians-Rays game too! We’ll answer questions! We’ll offer opinions! Come join us! You should get an email alert when we begin.
Blake Snell’s first pitch to Jake Bauers is a slider, and it is a strike. Dodger Stadium is a mass of nerves. It is the seventh inning. Moments ago, the Dodgers took a 2-1 lead when Will Smith banged a double off the wall, just the club’s second extra-base hit of the series. The ball cracking off Smith’s bat looked and sounded like it was gone, but like pretty much every Dodgers batted ball against Milwaukee, it seemed to die in mid-air.
Los Angeles then left two runners in scoring position.
The lead remains 2-1.
A ballpark feels different when the home team holds the slimmest of leads. The positive energy that should come with winning is counteracted by the myriad ways the game might slip away. Snell had been perfect for the last four innings. He’d been untouchable. But then, to start the seventh inning, he walked Milwaukee’s Andrew Vaughn after a seven-pitch battle. Now he’s pitching from the stretch. His pitch count closes in on 100. He’s staying out there. It’s his game to win or lose.
Snell seems distracted by Milwaukee’s captain Christian Yelich, who has come in to pinch-run for Vaughn.
Snell’s second pitch to Jake Bauers is a changeup in the dirt.
Snell had dispatched Bauers with ease the first two times they faced each other in the game. In the second inning, he threw a buzzing inside fastball, and Bauers could only pop it to left. In the fifth, he blew a fastball by him for strike three. That makes five times that Blake Snell and Jake Bauers have matched up in the big leagues. Bauers is 0-for-5 with three strikeouts.
But it must be said: This is a different Jake Bauers.
Snell’s third pitch is a fastball down and away, and Bauers lets it go by for Ball 2.
In many ways, Blake Snell is the pitcher of this generation. In a time when pitchers put everything they have on every pitch in pursuit of the almighty strikeout, Snell strikes out more batters per nine innings than any starter in baseball history. His single-minded hunt for Ks and pitching perfection has won him two Cy Young awards and also landed him on a dozen injured lists. He has completed one game in eleven years. When he’s good, though, there’s nobody better.
Snell’s fourth pitch is the nastiest of change-ups, and Bauers misses it by a foot.
What is going through Jake Bauers’s mind now? There is nothing in baseball more challenging — mentally, physically, emotionally — than facing Blake Snell with two strikes. He might throw his 100-or-so mph fastball that moves whatever way it likes. He might throw his death-defying curveball. He might throw another changeup that seems to stop in midair. Heck, he might even throw that slider — it’s his fourth pitch, but when he throws it, espcially to lefties, batters swing and miss half the time.
What do you even look for if you're Jake Bauers?
Snell’s fifth pitch is that unhittable slider. Bauers fouls it off.
Jake Bauers considered quitting baseball a couple of years ago. He was drafted out of high school at 17 and quickly established himself as one of the top prospects in baseball. “Bauers has the makings of a younger Joey Votto,” Baseball America wrote of him in 2018.
Not long after, Cleveland eagerly dealt Yandy Diaz to Tampa Bay to get him. But it didn’t work out for Bauers in Cleveland. He had his moments. He hit for a cycle against Detroit. But all in all, he couldn’t quite handle big league pitching. Cleveland traded him to Seattle. He signed a minor-league deal with Cincinnati. He was traded to the Yankees. He was traded to the Brewers. He hit .199 for Milwaukee in 2024 and was dropped from the 40-man roster. Milwaukee tried to send Bauers to Class AAA Nashville.
He decided to walk away instead.
