Even when bad, Rays’ Tyler Glasnow shows how good he is - Tampa Bay Times

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ST. PETERSBURG — Tyler Glasnow showed off his immense physical talent by ripping through his first three starts for the Rays this season, mixing his 100 mph fastball, physics-defying curve and newly added sharp slider in allowing just one run over 19-2/3 innings while striking out 29.

“He’s one of a kind,” teammate Josh Fleming said. “What he does should be kind of impossible. He’s just a freak of nature. ... There’s really nothing like him.”

But it was how Glasnow handled his next two starts, when he didn’t have his top-shelf stuff, when the breaks and the games weren’t going his way, that better showed how good of a frontline pitcher he has become.

April 17 in New York, Glasnow threw 30 pitches in the first inning, walked two batters to start the second, endured a freak hand cramp in the fifth and piled up 105 pitches in all. Still, he got through five innings, allowing the Yankees only one run in a game the Rays won.

Last Friday against Toronto at Tropicana Field, Glasnow threw 37 pitches in another rough first inning, giving up four runs (twice the total from his first four games) on four hits and a walk. But he corrected his delivery and got through five more innings on just 57 additional pitches to save the bullpen in a loss.

“He’s really blossomed into a star on the mound,” said Yankees pitcher Jameson Taillon, a former teammate of Glasnow’s in Pittsburgh. “He’s always had the physical talent. He’s always thrown extremely hard, he’s always had a good breaking ball.

“I’d probably say the biggest thing that’s impressed me is a game like (April 17), which I wouldn’t call his best game of the year by any means. When I played with him, I thought that game had the chance to go sideways. When he was younger, that game could have gotten out of hand, even in the first inning. But he bounced back and gave them some strong innings.

“So probably just the in-game confidence, knowing that he’s been there before, and he’s gotten out of those jams before and the ability to work through it,” Taillon continued. “He’s just kind of blossomed into a big-leaguer. And he’s matured a bunch.”

Rays manager Kevin Cash has a similar take on Glasnow, who is slated for his sixth start of the season on Wednesday.

“Most starting pitchers and guys that have been around a long time, their defining moments kind of come throughout their career when they’re not in sync with their delivery, when they don’t have all three weapons going at one time,” he said.

Rays pitcher Tyler Glasnow reacts to pain as a trainer helps him as catcher Francisco Mejia, left, watches during the fifth inning of a game against the New York Yankees earlier this month in New York. [ FRANK FRANKLIN II | AP ]

For that reason, Cash said the game in New York actually was Glasnow’s “best start,” even better than his 14-strikeout, two-hit, 7-2/3-inning outing vs. Texas the turn before.

“Tyler bought himself time,” Cash said. “It was really, really impressive the way he was able to kind of stay under control, stay poised, knowing that he was getting frustrated, he couldn’t find it. But he kind of locked in after the second inning and then really did a nice job of limiting a very good offense.”

Similarly impressive was how Glasnow, 27, regrouped Friday, finding the rhythm to get his delivery back in sync to battle through six innings against the Blue Jays.

“I don’t think any of us would have envisioned that,” Cash said. “Huge credit to him for being able to kind of reset himself and get that efficiency back that he’s had pretty much all season long.

“Glas is motivated, very driven to be really, really good. Really special. He was frustrated. You could have let that frustration consume you, and then after the second or third inning his night’s over. But he was able to kind of flush it and continue to hold us right there, allow us to get back in the ballgame.”

Glasnow (2-1, 2.05) said learning how to pitch well when he doesn’t have his good stuff is part of his growth.

“For sure, I’ve been in that situation before and it’s kind of gotten the best of me,” he said. “In the past, I would have just tried to over-correct and try to feel perfect. But I think once you do feel like that, it’s good to just realize, I just feel bad that day, and you have to go compete with what you have. I think I did a good job of just kind of canceling out all the externals and just trying to go and execute pitches.”

And turn a bad day into something better.

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Even when bad, Rays’ Tyler Glasnow shows how good he is - Tampa Bay Times
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