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First Pitch: Why Tyler Glasnow Isn’t a Good Option For a September Callup

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A few days ago, I approached Sean McCool with an idea about a combined article, discussing why Tyler Glasnow wouldn’t be a good option for a September call-up. Sean has covered Glasnow for most of the year in Altoona, and I got to see him all year last year, plus a few times this year. Combined, we could give a better look at where he was at with his development, while also digging into the contract implications of such a call-up.

Sean took the part of the article that deals with where Glasnow is with his development. I took the contract and value portion. Each side is in agreement that Glasnow isn’t ready and shouldn’t be used by the Pirates in September in any role in the Majors. We wrote all of this before Glasnow’s start tonight, which didn’t go well. So originally, the thought was that this wouldn’t go over so well, and would be met with a lot more calls for Glasnow to come up than we were seeing earlier in the week. That might not be the case after tonight’s outing (which John Dreker recapped in the Prospect Watch tonight).

Glasnow Just Isn’t Ready

By Sean McCool

There are two names that have regularly been tossed around when saying that Glasnow should be promoted: David Price and Gerrit Cole. Both players are compared to Glasnow for different reasons and have been used in debates as to call up Glasnow sooner rather than later, but let’s dispute these call-up charges using these players.

Obviously, Gerrit Cole was not a late season call-up, and the way that he was promoted actually helps the side saying that Glasnow should stay Triple-A; however, people cite that Cole came up and made an immediate impact for the big league club. I know two years ago seems like a lifetime, but let’s revisit exactly what happened with Cole in 2013.

Cole threw 68 innings in Triple-A Indy from April through June (plus 6 innings in his last start of 2012 for 74 innings total), and he had a 2.91 ERA, allowing 3.7 BB/9 and striking out 6.2 batters per 9 innings. Cole did everything he needed to do in Triple-A to merit a promotion to the majors, and he received that promotion on June 11th, allowing two runs in 6.2 innings. In his first five starts in the majors, Cole had a 3.94 ERA and 3.83 xFIP in 29.2 IP.

Cole’s major league debut was good. It wasn’t amazing. It was good for a rookie coming up to pitch for a team in a pennant race. Could Tyler Glasnow come up and put up similar numbers in five (or so) September starts for the Pirates? He may. He may not. It’s extremely tough to tell. Cole was still pretty raw when he made his debut, and Glasnow is the same.

So where is the difference? First off, Cole pitched three seasons for UCLA before being drafted by the Pirates and inserted into the Pirates organization. Cole was a college pitcher. Glasnow was drafted out of high school. There is a big difference. Cole and Glasnow’s Double-A innings are pretty much a wash, while Cole threw 74 innings in Triple-A before being promoted. Glasnow has thrown six as of right now. Again, big difference. Also, the Pirates didn’t call up Cole with a month (or so) left in a season where they are deep in the race for the division. He had a couple months to get acclimated before the pressure really hit. Tyler Glasnow has been pitching in front of 2,000-6,000 people in Altoona most of the year, so he shouldn’t be expected to come up in front of 38,000 against the Cardinals and be fantastic. That is asking a lot out of a 21-year-old.

David Price would be the comparison that people say is most like Glasnow’s situation. Price marched through A+ (34.2 innings), Double-A (57 innings), and Triple-A (18 innings) before making him major league debut September 14th for the Tampa Bay Rays. Price actually had some not-so-nice numbers at Triple-A, with a 4.50 ERA and 22 hits allowed before his promotion.

Of course, we all know the story. Price pitched out of the bullpen and ended up pitching some very high leverage innings for the Rays on their way to a World Series appearance. The Rays converted Price to the bullpen down the stretch for the big league club, something that has been thrown out there for Glasnow to do down the stretch,

Again, Price pitched three seasons at Vanderbilt before his aggressive promotions through the Rays organization. Glasnow was pitching in high school.

What a lot of people skip when telling the story on David Price is the fact that the Rays began Price in Triple-A Durham for the first month and a half of 2009, presumably to slow down his major league arbitration clock. How do you think the Pirates twitterverse would respond if Glasnow came up this September then sent back down to Indianapolis for two months next year? The takes would be hotter than that McDonald’s coffee that you spilled on your lap last week.

Comparisons aside, does Glasnow deserve a promotion to the majors based strictly on what he has done? I’ll let you answer that question based on the facts.

On July 26th in what would be Glasnow’s final Double-A start, he threw ten changeups. In his previous five starts since returning from the disabled list, I would be surprised if Glasnow threw ten changeups combined. And, every time he threw it, it seemed like the opposing batter teed off on the pitch. I’ve never heard a manager, director, coach, or general manager talk so much about one pitch before Glasnow’s changeup. (I could’ve started a new Twitter account called Glasnow’s changeup because that seemed to be all anyone cared about.)

He had one start in Double-A where everyone was happy with how to pitch performed. He threw it for a swinging strike twice against Nick Swisher. Otherwise, the pitch still needs to perform better and get more action. Glasnow needs to learn to trust the pitch, rather than be forced to throw it by his manager. The changeup has been flat most of this season, allowing batters who were sitting fastball to pull the pitch and hit it far. He did see improvements once he was able to slow it down to a more appropriate 88 – 90 MPH. It ended up having some sink action when it came in at a speed that made the pitch more effective. He really needs to refine the pitch in Triple-A, though. I wouldn’t want him going up to the majors in a playoff race and continue to work on the pitch in games that really matter. It only takes one pitch to kill your confidence.

So what about coming up and utilizing a strong fastball and curveball? That would essentially delegate Glasnow to a bullpen role in the majors (even though he has performed well in the minors while essentially only throwing the two pitches). The problem with Glasnow coming up and pitching strictly out of the bullpen is that he has struggled in many of the environments you’d be presenting to him. First off, he hasn’t performed the greatest in his first starts after a promotion, even though the earned runs against don’t necessary spell that. He has struggled with control after promotions, taking some time to get himself adjusted to the new level. Also, he hasn’t performed the best in playoff situations over the past two years, which would be no where close to the pressure presented in a MLB playoff race.

These situations (promotions and high pressure situations) shouldn’t be a long-term concern since he does seem to settle down and get more comfortable after adjusting, but expecting him to come up and have immediate success in a playoff race is asking a lot. Sometimes we forget that these guys aren’t just stats on paper; they are human beings with real emotions. Glasnow will learn to control his emotions and use them for good, but he hasn’t quite gotten there yet.

The mid-season ankle injury really hurt Glasnow’s opportunity to move up to Triple-A sooner, essentially limiting him to six or so starts in Indy this season. Give him 50 or 60 innings in Triple-A next season, and you have a much more refined version of the flamethrower — with a nasty curveball and improved changeup — that is able to come up to the majors and make an immediate impact on the big league club.

The Service Time and Value Argument

By Tim Williams

Even if Glasnow was ready enough to come up and play a small role in the majors, it wouldn’t make sense to call him up for that role. This is the part where I get into everyone’s favorite topic: service time and Super 2.

First, let’s look at the service time issue. A year of service time is counted as 172 days, and a season in baseball is usually around 182 days. That means a player needs to be held down in the minors for a few weeks in order to get an extra year of service time. We saw that this year with the Cubs and Kris Bryant. They called him up on a day where he would have exactly 171 days of service time beyond the 2015 season. Since he has less than a year of service at the end of the season, that means the Cubs will control his rights for six more full years.

If Glasnow were to come up in September, it would give him a month of service time. This means he’d have to be down an additional month to get that extra year of service time (unless the Pirates want that extra year being his September call-up in 2015, rather than 5.5 months next year). The same thing happened with David Price. Sure, he was a September call-up. But he didn’t return to the majors until the end of May, at which point he had an extra year of service time once again.

Assuming Glasnow was ready at the start of the 2016 season (and I don’t think he will be), you’re essentially trading one month of a 6th inning reliever this year for one month of a starter next year by calling him up.

But then there’s the Super 2 topic. Players are generally eligible for arbitration in three of their six years of control. But the players with the top 22% of service time between two and three years get an additional year of arbitration, replacing their final league minimum year. And this process can be costly. Once again, we go to David Price as an example.

Price went year to year, and was called up early enough to be Super 2 eligible. He made $4.35 M in his first year, $10.1125 M in his second year, and $14 M in his third year. Then he received $19.75 M in his fourth year.

Cole Hamels had a bit of the same situation. He signed an extension to buy out his first three years of arbitration, getting him $4.35 M in year one, $6.65 M in year two, and $9.5 M in year three. He then received $15 M in his fourth year.

In each case, that final year of arbitration was expensive. And if Glasnow becomes the pitcher we expect he will become, then the Super 2 status would cost the Pirates about $15-20 M extra in the long-term, considering they would essentially be replacing one of Glasnow’s league minimum years with that final year of arbitration.

So what do the Pirates get for that added money? In a normal circumstance, they would be able to call up Glasnow at the end of April, rather than the second week of June. Essentially, they get six extra weeks for the long-term price of $15-20 M. A full MLB season is 26 weeks. A six-week stretch would amount to 23% of a full season. That means $15 M for six weeks is the equivalent of paying $65 M per year.

There is nothing that any rookie could do in six weeks to justify an extra $15 M long-term, especially for a small market team. For that reason, it makes sense to keep Glasnow down until the Super 2 deadline passes.

The problem here is that if you call Glasnow up in September, you’d push the Super 2 date back an additional month. That date would go from the second week of June to the third week of July (it would be a little longer than a month due to the 2015 timeline being longer than 30 days). And once again, you’re trading one month of a 6th inning guy in 2015 for one month of a starter in 2016 (and a starter who has more Triple-A experience).

Then there’s the actual impact in each role. It would be unfair to expect Glasnow to do much better than what John Holdzkom did last year as a September call-up. Holdzkom came up and pitched nine innings, with a 2.00 ERA, a 14.0 K/9 and a 2.0 BB/9. And in that time, he had a 0.2 WAR. By comparison, Gerrit Cole was worth about 0.7 WAR in his first month in the big leagues.

The upside of a great reliever over a month isn’t going to make a huge difference for the Pirates, especially since they’ve added Joakim Soria. And that upside isn’t going to match an extra month of Glasnow as a starter next year, after he’s had some more time to develop and fix his current development issues in Triple-A.

**Prospect Watch: Glasnow Battles Control Issues in Second AAA Start. John Dreker has the breakdown of Glasnow’s start, and I’ve got a live report from Morgantown.

**Is Gregory Polanco Finally On Track to Become a Star? Great article from Pete Ellis looking at Gregory Polanco’s recent trends, and how prospects can get unfair expectations placed on them from the start.

**David Todd Podcast: Live Minor League Reports, Bell and Glasnow Analysis. My weekly radio interview with David Todd, discussing a lot of players I’ve seen on this road trip, while also talking about when Tyler Glasnow and Josh Bell will be ready.

**Pirates Left-Hander Hector Garcia Has Tommy John Surgery. John will have more on this trend of Tommy John surgeries tomorrow morning.

**Adjustments Fuel Huge Run For Keon Broxton. Ryan Palencer looks at the recent success from Keon Broxton in Triple-A.

**Morning Report: Latest Prospect Watch Update, Plus Glasnow’s Second Start

 

Tim Williams
Tim Williams
Tim is the owner, producer, editor, and lead writer of PiratesProspects.com. He has been running Pirates Prospects since 2009, becoming the first new media reporter and outlet covering the Pirates at the MLB level in 2011 and 2012. His work can also be found in Baseball America, where he has been a contributor since 2014 and the Pirates' correspondent since 2019.

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