I think that most of us expected this news in one form or another, but Pirates Prospects is reporting this morning (subscription link) that Tyler Glasnow, the Pirates’ top prospect and one of the best pitching prospects in baseball, is heading to Indanapolis after dominating for much of this season in Double-A with Altoona.
Glasnow’s numbers this year are video game numbers. He’s made 12 starts (he missed some time due to an ankle injury) and thrown 63 innings. In those 63 innings he’s got 82 strikeouts against just 19 walks (that’s a 4.32 K/BB) and 41 hits. He’s got a 2.43 ERA and a 0.95 WHIP, and only allowed two home runs. His control is much improved this year, and according to that Pirates Prospects link, he’s made some big strides with his changeup lately, which is likely what his promotion was waiting on.
To answer the obvious question: I don’t know if there’s any chance the Pirates would use Glasnow down the stretch this year. That doesn’t seem like something they’d be willing to do based on past precedence, but I hate making blanket statements like that based on situations that don’t necessarily apply from year to year. This is a very good Pirate team that would benefit hugely from winning their division in a way that I don’t think applied to Pirate teams of the past two years, which means that they might be willing to try things that they haven’t been willing to try in the past. That’s not to say that it’s something that they WILL do, just that I don’t want to dismiss it out of hand. I WOULD say that I doubt they use him out of the bullpen, though. I don’t see any evidence that the Pirates would be OK with moving valuable prospects back and forth from the bullpen, and the Pirates tend to view relievers as fungible assets that are relatively easy to come by. They’re going to have some September call-ups that they can make this year just like they did last year and I wouldn’t rule them out from acquiring an arm in the next 48 hours at this deadline.
What’s important here is, of course that Glasnow is moving up, and his Pirate debut might be less than a year away. That’s exciting news, especially for a club that’s gotten a lot of bad pitching news in the upper levels of the minor leagues this year.
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