Blake Snell was cruising in Game 6 with a 1-0 lead. Through 5.1 innings, he had allowed just one baserunner and struck out nine. Despite that, anyone who has watched the Rays all year knew that manager Kevin Cash would likely turn to his bullpen at Snell’s first sign of trouble.

After all, it’s what Cash had done so brilliantly all year. He had seemingly mastered the art of not allowing his starter to pitch too deep into games and giving opposing lineups a different look before they could get too comfortable a third time through the order.

But when Snell allowed a one-out single to the Dodgers’ No. 9 hitter Austin Barnes, even those most familiar with the Rays way were surprised when Cash quickly yanked Snell and gave the ball to Nick Anderson.

It didn’t matter that the first three hitters in the Dodgers’ lineup, Mookie Betts, Corey Seager and Justin Turner, had gone a combined 0-for-6 with six strikeouts the first two times through the order.

The baseball world, of course, was outraged when removing Snell resulted in Betts doubling down the left-field line to bring up second and third for Seager. Then Anderson threw a wild pitch to score Barnes and tie the game.

Seager followed up with a hard grounder to first and Betts beat Yandy Diaz’s throw home to take the lead. The Dodgers never looked back on their way to a 3-1 win to clinch their first World Series since 1988.

Cash was crushed for removing Snell so quickly and analytics became an easy scapegoat.

However, many of the arguments people made to oppose Cash's decision to pull Snell don't add up when you take a closer look.

Why wouldn't Cash let Snell face Betts for the third time when he struck him out in the two earlier at-bats?

Yes, Snell won the battle in Betts’ first two at-bats, but consider the following. Betts had a .892 OPS in 27 plate appearances against Snell before this postseason and only two of those were strikeouts. Why would those two plate appearances earlier in the game suddenly matter more than the other 27 plate appearances?

It is important to take the larger sample into account when looking into these matchups. Two plate appearances in one game have no predictive value for determining what will happen the third time.

Why would Cash remove Snell when Betts was way better against right-handed pitchers than left-handed pitchers this year?

Yes, Betts’ OPS against righties in 2020 was 1.061 compared to .531 against lefties while striking out nearly 11 percent more often against lefties. However, Betts had only 64 plate appearances against lefties this year because of the abbreviated regular season. That number is way too small of a sample size to matter.

Look at his career numbers against both righties and lefties. Against righties, his career OPS is .897 compared to a nearly identical .888 career OPS against lefties. His career strikeout rate of 11.9 percent against lefties is actually better than his 13.3 percent against righties.

The small sample size of him being significantly better against righties in a shortened season doesn't suddenly transcend the rest of his career.

Even all of that data doesn’t matter much though. FanGraphs projects that it takes right-handed hitters 2,200 plate appearances against left-handed pitchers to conclude a player’s results in such matchups are different from a league-average platoon split. The data would also project Betts’ splits to be better against lefties than righties going forward.

Why would Cash pull Snell when he's been dealing?

This argument is irrelevant. There is no way to predict how a pitcher will perform in an inning based on what he's done earlier in the game.

First of all, think about all the times Clayton Kershaw collapsed in his postseason career for being left in one inning or even one batter too many. Don Mattingly and Dave Roberts were always crushed for leaving him in too long.

Maybe Kershaw’s postseason career would show entirely different numbers if his manager occasionally chose the route Cash did with Snell.

More importantly, look at the outings in recent history similar to Snell’s Game 6 performance.

Snell’s final line: 5.1 IP, 2 H, 1 R, 9 K

Six-Man Rotation points out that from 2017-2020, there have been 202 starts in which the starting pitcher threw five innings, allowed no more than one run, walked no more than one hitter and struck out at least nine batters.

Here are the pitchers with the most starts under those criteria in that time span.

• Justin Verlander, 14
• Chris Sale, 11
• Gerrit Cole, 11
• Max Scherzer, 10
• Jacob deGrom, 8
• James Paxton, 7
• Corey Kluber, 6
• Clayton Kershaw, 6
• Aaron Nola, 5
• Walker Buehler, 4
• Sonny Gray, 4
• Trevor Bauer, 4

Like Snell, those are many of the elite pitchers in the game. In those 202 starts, the combined ERA was 0.62 through the first five innings.

The pitcher came back out for the sixth inning in 181 of those 202 games, and in most cases, it was his third time through the order. In the sixth inning, the 181 pitchers allowed a 3.86 ERA through 167.2 innings. That's 3.24 runs more on average. Chances are the Dodgers would have taken the lead even if Snell stayed in the game.

Furthermore, opposing hitters have a 123 OPS+ against Snell in his career when facing him for the third time in a game. Snell had also not finished the sixth inning once all season.

His final pitch of the night was a fastball that was a full mph below where he had been the rest of the game, so there was evidence Snell was getting tired too.

When taking into account all of that information, Cash’s decision to pull Snell, in fact, was the correct decision. The real mistake was turning to Anderson.

Despite having a phenomenal regular season, where he posted a 0.55 ERA and a 14.33 strikeout rate, he had allowed a run in six consecutive postseason games before Game 6 and there was evidence that suggested he was becoming more vulnerable.

BrooksBaseball.net shows Anderson’s fastball velocity and vertical movement were declining throughout the postseason. It's no coincidence his production tailed off too.

Maybe the decline was due to the heavy postseason workload. After all, Anderson threw 2.1 more innings this postseason (14.2) than any other reliever (Pete Fairbanks second-highest at 12.1 IP). Even Anderson admitted after the game he didn’t feel his best.

“Workload, 2020 season, the whole thing is just crazy, honestly,” Anderson said. “Not having a normal routine, lifting, the season, everything, it’s been crazy. I didn’t feel as good as I would have liked to, but it’s the big leagues. You’re not going to feel good every time. I was still confident. It wasn’t the situation, it wasn’t being in the World Series or anything like that. Not a lot of gas.”

What the Rays should have done was hand the ball to Castillo (11 IP), their best reliever throughout the postseason, to get the remaining two outs against the top of the order. Castillo could have even come back out to start the seventh inning to face Max Muncy, one of the hottest hitters in the Dodgers’ lineup if he made it through the sixth smoothly.

Then they could have gone to Anderson or even Fairbanks to face the bottom of the Dodgers’ lineup in a lower pressure situation than what Anderson faced in the sixth.

That choice would have been supported by both the numbers and the eye test. It is unclear whether the Rays’ front office planned to have Anderson be the first bullpen arm used or if Cash was granted the autonomy to make that decision.

If that was the plan all along, then the script was flawed from the beginning.

Analytics have not ruined the game and they certainly aren’t to blame in this particular instance. It was simply the application of data that was done incorrectly in this case.