Kiley McDanielOct 21, 2025, 07:00 AM ET
- ESPN MLB Insider
- Kiley McDaniel covers MLB prospects, the MLB Draft and more, including trades and free agency.
- Has worked for three MLB teams.
Co-author of Author of ‘Future Value’
The Los Angeles Dodgers’ pitching rotation has been the most dominant force of this year’s MLB playoffs, with L.A.’s four aces combining for a microscopic 1.40 ERA and 81 strikeouts over 10 postseason starts.
With seemingly every performance from Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow and Shohei Ohtani comes a new wave of stats that convey the rarity of their achievements racing around social media.
As L.A.’s four starters prepare to face the the Toronto Blue Jays in the World Series, we’re here to get you ready for their Fall Classic appearances with a guide to what each does best and the pitch mix that makes the quartet so dominant.
Blake Snell: The Game 1 guy
Ronald Martinez/Getty Images
What he has done this October:0.86 ERA, 12.0 K/9 in 21 IP
What makes him so good:Snell’s excellence is easy to understand: He has been a frontline starter for almost a decade, signed a $182 million deal last year and is a lefty who throws in the mid-90s. He already has two Cy Young awards and a 3.15 ERA over his 10-year big league career. But there has been a subtle change in his approach during his first year with the Dodgers that has powered his playoff dominance.
Editor’s Picks
2 Related
How he uses his pitches:Snell had been a power fastball/breaking ball pitcher for basically his whole career — but this season, his changeup became his second-most-used pitch and his clear best by run value (i.e. good things happened when he threw it this year, much more so than his other pitches). Run value can be somewhat deceptive — what if your dominating fastball gets hitters on their heels, but the changeup gets the strikeout and all of the statistical credit for the strikeout? Snell seems to believe in what the numbers are showing, too.
His changeup usage was 23.6% in the regular season and is 32.4% in the playoffs. His regular-season miss rate on the pitch was 43.5% and it’s 65.5% in the playoffs. It has been at 60% or higher in all three of his playoff starts. The pitch movement and velocity is almost identical to last year’s version, but the outcomes, specifically the in-zone contact rate and launch angle allowed, have improved pretty dramatically.
Blake Snell’s Ascending Changeup
Avg. Launch AngleIn-Zone Contact RateUsage2024 Reg Season365%18%2025 Reg Season-559%24%2025 Playoffs-138%32%
Snell threw the pitch only 2% of the time against left-handed hitters in the regular season but that has ticked up in the playoffs, increasing with each start to 7% against the Brewers.
Those extra changeups are basically coming at the expense of his fastball usage. Throwing fewer fastballs is somewhat common in the high-stakes environment of the playoffs, but Snell is thriving by relying more on his changeup than his slider and curveball in those key situations this year.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto: The six-pitch magician
CAROLINE BREHMAN/EPA/Shutterstock (15513732ag)
What he’s done this October:1.83 ERA, 8.2 K/9 in 19â…” IP
What makes him so good:Yamamoto came into the league last year with a lot of hype and largely met it, but missed nearly three months because of a shoulder issue after being hit around in his first big league appearance.
How the Dodgers fixed Roki Sasaki
After a disastrous MLB debut, L.A.’s new ninth-inning man has unleashed jaw-dropping stuff in October.
Jeff Passan »
This year, he took a big step forward and looks more than worth his $325 million deal, throwing 173â…” innings with a 2.49 ERA and sparkling peripherals that added up to a 5.0 WAR regular season. If you consult run values, all six of his pitches were better in 2025 than 2024, in addition to throwing almost twice as many innings. What did he change?
The velocity and movement of his pitches are basically the same and the usage of those pitches was basically the same, other than shifting 5% usage of his curveball to his cutter, as he improved the movement on his cutter by a few inches.
How he uses his pitches:Take a look at the subtle shifts with his two best pitches: his four-seam fastball and splitter. Here are the locations of his fastball against right-handed hitters in the 2024 regular season (left) and 2025 regular season (right).
TruMedia
It’s subtle, but that singular red dot down the middle has migrated toward the edge of the zone, and there’s a little more action across the top of the strike zone, which is where most of the misses are occurring. His run value per fastball thrown almost doubled and the total runs saved went from plus-5 to plus-17 (a top-10 figure in baseball) while the xWOBA (expected production by hitters) went from .360 to .299 and his miss rate also ticked up by 2%.
Though the difference in locations aren’t as easy to see, the execution of Yamamoto’s splitter also improved. His average launch angle allowed went from 1 to minus-8, and the barrel rate dropped from 17% to 9% which helped fuel a 24-point drop in xwOBA and a spike in miss rate on that pitch. His run value on that pitch is plus-9, third best in baseball.
When Yamamoto is dealing, it’s because of those two pitches, which are his most-used offerings against lefties and righties. And yes, they also tunnel well:
Yoshinobu Yamamoto, 98mph Fastball and 93mph Splitter, Overlay
Good luck. 😳 pic.twitter.com/RDlNGBMTSd
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) September 7, 2025
Tyler Glasnow: The 6-foot-8 power arm
Caroline Brehman/Shutterstock
What he’s done this October:0.68 ERA, 12.2 K/9 in 13â…“ IP
What makes him so good: Glasnow’s style of pitching is a function of his immense physical gifts and throughout his career, slowly figuring out how to solve the geometry problem they create.
He is 6-foot-8 and a standout athlete who can generate the biggest extension (how far from the rubber he releases a pitch) in baseball while also throwing from one of the highest arm slots in the league. Glasnow’s long arms help create velocity easily but make it harder to repeat his delivery — so his precision within the strike zone can come and go. Due to this, he relies more on power than feel.
How he uses his pitches: Glasnow has mid-90s velocity but can achieve a flatter plane to the plate to get misses up in the strike zone due to his huge extension, which brings him lower on the mound to negate his height and high arm slot.
One-stop shop for 2025 MLB playoffs
We have everything you need to keep up with all the action this October. Schedule, bracket, more »
He has a natural ability to cut the ball, so his fastball has near-cutter break while sitting in the mid-90s, his slider has typical movement but comes in 3 mph harder than the average slider and his curveball is also harder than the average bender — with six extra inches of drop.
He relies on that curveball against lefties because he doesn’t throw a changeup, and the slider is the breaker of choice against righties.
Glasnow’s use of these three main pitches puts the hitter in conflict. He takes away their time to make decisions by throwing hard, and though he can’t get huge horizontal movement, he can tunnel the pitches so they look the same when the hitter is trying to decide. I could show you a plot of how he executes this, but it’s easier to see in video. Here’s a typical attack plan versus a right-handed hitter:
Tyler Glasnow, 97mph Fastball (foul) and 89mph Slider (Sword K), Individual Pitches + Overlay. pic.twitter.com/usSXo0Hng5
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) August 31, 2025
Glasnow’s game is one of extremes, but when he’s healthy and executing, he’s nearly unhittable.
Shohei Ohtani: The two-way sensation
AP Photo/Ashley Landis
What he’s done this October:2.25 ERA, 14.3 K/9 in 12 IP
What makes him so good:You mean besides being a three-time MVP (who is about to win his fourth award) as the most dominant two-way force the sport has seen — fresh off one of the most incredible performances in postseason history?
Well, the funny thing about Ohtani is his eye-popping numbers at the plate and the two-way accolades make it easy to forget how good he is just as a pitcher. In a career that spans 100 regular-season starts, Ohtani has posted a 2.87 ERA and struck out 670 batters in 528â…”.
How he uses his pitches: You remember Ohtani being a really good pitcher in 2023 with the Angels, and now he somehow seems better. How? Well, it’s pretty simple:
Shohei Ohtani’s Surging Average Velocity
FastballSinkerCurveballCutterSliderSplitterSweeper2023 Reg Season96.894.475.789.585.388.283.72025 Reg Season98.496.278.693.988.190.385.0Velocity Increase1.61.82.94.42.82.11.3
His velocity is up a few tenths on most of these pitches in the postseason, too, as you’d expect.
Before the “velocity isn’t everything” crowd blows a gasket, Ohtani’s Zone% and Strike% are better in 2025 than 2023, and the shapes of his pitches haven’t really changed. He gave back an inch or so of movement on some of those offspeed pitches, a good swap given what the industry understands about pitching development.
When scouts in any sport talk about athleticism, it’s usually about several things that standout athleticism can affect. In Ohtani’s case, it’s quite obvious: He’s one of the best hitters, and at age 31, after multiple elbow surgeries, he can improve his velocity and strike-throwing at the same time when he was already one of the better pitchers in the game.
Discover more from 6up.net
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.