In May, doctors removed loose bodies from his left elbow. In September, Blake Snell has a 1.04 ERA over his last six starts for the Los Angeles Dodgers — the most dominant stretch of his season and, arguably, of his career as a Dodger. Forty-six strikeouts across 34.2 innings, zero home runs allowed, and the best team in the National League leaning on him heading into October.
Before Things Got Good
The 2026 season started sideways for Snell. He opened the year on the IL with shoulder fatigue, returned May 9 to start against the Atlanta Braves, and lasted three innings while allowing four earned runs. Days later, imaging revealed the loose bodies in his elbow. He went under the knife on May 20.
Three months out. Four rehab starts — at Triple-A Oklahoma City and Single-A Ontario — with a 3.09 ERA and 19 strikeouts to confirm the arm was responding. Then on August 12, he was back on a Dodgers mound to face the Kansas City Royals. What followed has been hard to process, even for the people watching it happen.
Six Starts, One Story
On September 12, Noah Camras (@noahcamras) posted the six post-surgery lines side by side. They’re almost uncomfortable to read:
- 6 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 10 K
- 6 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 5 K
- 6 IP, 2 H, 0 ER, 6 K
- 5 IP, 3 H, 1 ER, 10 K
- 6 IP, 5 H, 0 ER, 7 K
- 5.2 IP, 4 H, 1 ER, 8 K
One note on that last line: the run charged in Snell’s sixth start — against the Miami Marlins around September 11 — was actually the bullpen’s responsibility. His real line was 5.2 innings with zero earned runs. The cumulative result: 1.04 ERA, 46 strikeouts, zero home runs allowed across those six outings. For reference, a sub-2.00 ERA over any six-start stretch is elite territory. At 1.04, we’re somewhere else entirely.
Why It Matters Right Now
The Dodgers are leading the NL West in September 2026. They won the World Series in 2025 — Snell’s first year in Los Angeles, when he went 5-4 with a 2.35 ERA in the regular season and made six postseason appearances — and the organization knows that getting to October with Snell pitching like this changes the math for every opponent in the bracket.
Snell signed a five-year, $182 million deal before the 2025 season. The weight of that contract, combined with stints on the IL in 2024, 2025, and again in 2026, had turned every start into a health update rather than a baseball story. What’s happening in August and September is the first time in a long while that the conversation is actually about the pitching.
A Cy Young winner in both leagues — AL in 2018 with Tampa Bay, NL in 2023 with San Diego, one of only seven pitchers in MLB history to pull that off — Blake Snell has always had the résumé to be an October ace. The question was never whether he could. It was whether his body would let him. Right now, those six stat lines are the answer.
What Statcast Says
Snell’s full 2026 numbers across 7 starts and 32.0 innings:
- ERA: 1.97 · WHIP: 1.09
- Strikeouts: 43 · Walks: 14 (32.6% strikeout rate)
- xERA: 2.11
- Fastball: 96 mph average, 2,496 rpm spin rate
- Whiff rate: 36% of swings miss entirely
- Batting average against: .185
- Exit velocity allowed: 81.7 mph — one of the lowest marks in the league
- Barrel rate allowed: 1.4%
Where he ranks league-wide:
- Fastball velocity: 75th percentile
- Fastball spin rate: 93rd percentile (elite)
That 81.7 mph exit velocity isn’t a fluke — it’s the direct result of how well Snell is controlling contact. When hitters do make contact, they’re hitting it soft. Going 32 innings in 2026 without allowing a single home run is not luck. It’s execution.
