Tyler Glasnow has had a rocky start to his Triple-A career. He saw a similar beginning to his outing on Tuesday night, giving up three hits and three walks in his first three innings. After putting on the first batter of the fourth inning, Glasnow hit a groove, and retired seven of his last eight hitters.
“Right now I am kind of in a little rut these past couple of starts,” Glasnow said. “It just happens, it’s baseball. I am definitely not as comfortable as I was before, but it is nice to go out with not near your best stuff and do alright.”
While he allowed a run in the third inning, Glasnow ended both the second and the third innings with strikeouts to strand runners in scoring position. In the third inning, he struck out back to back hitters in that situation. Sometimes, Glasnow admitted, getting into a jam puts him in the right mindset.
“I feel like I do a little bit better when there is more pressure on,” Glasnow said. “It feels good.”
While he did allow three walks, the command was much better for Glasnow than it was last time out on August 6th in Durham. In that contest, Glasnow just looked visibly uncomfortable most of the outing and lumbered to 94 pitches, only 46 of which were strikes.
On Tuesday, Glasnow tossed 53 of his 88 pitches from strikes. While it is not exactly where he wants it to be, he is seeing improvements.
“I didn’t really have any of my pitches,” Glasnow said. “It’s coming and it was better than my last outing. It’s slowly getting better, but I think that it is just one of those things that you have to work out of.”
In addition, his fastball velocity has been a bit erratic and down some over his past three starts with Indianapolis. On Tuesday, he was consistently in the 92 to 93 range, but did touch 95 on some occasions. Glasnow blames the dip in velocity to the time of the season and a bit of wear. He said that he physically feels fine and expects the velocity return before the season is all said and done.
“I feel good and I don’t feel tired, I think that we are getting into that velocity dip a little bit,” Glasnow said. “It will come back like it does. It is just something that I have to work out of.”
In addition, Glasnow added his first career pickoff in the first inning off Daniel Fields. That is the good news. The bad news is that he allowed two more stolen bases. While it was not the six that he allowed in the Durham disaster, Glasnow still knows that he has some work to do in that department.
“I think [stolen bases allowed] is something that I beat myself up about a little bit,” Glasnow said. “I get in the mode of trying to fix what I am doing and I don’t even think about the base runners. I kind of had a little bit of trouble with that tonight too. I was not holding guys on very well, but that has gotten a lot better from where I used to be. That is something that I need to pay attention to and I will go out in my next start and see what I can do.”
While he clearly did not have his sharpest stuff on Tuesday, it was nice to see Glasnow battle and work six strong innings. He also did a nice job pitching out of jams. He’s still not showing the dominant form that he displayed in Altoona, which earned him the top pitching prospect honors in that league, but he might be starting to head in the right direction.
