Glasnow sent down to work on the philosophy of pitching

Tyler Glasnow was sent back to AAA earlier today after yet another lackluster start, but it probably wasn’t because he gave up too many runs.

Tyler Glasnow is often referred to with glowing accolades such as “potential top of the rotation pitcher”, “possesses swing and miss stuff” and “has a high ceiling”, but he has rarely shown these traits while in a Pittsburgh Pirates uniform.

His ERA for the season sits at a whopping 7.45 and that figure is legitimized by a FIP of 5.82.  Glasnow has given up 1.91 walks and hits per inning pitched (WHIP) which means he is pitching from the stretch almost exclusively.  Glasnow has been especially prone to the long ball, giving up almost two home runs for every nine innings pitched.

It is hard to win games with those statistics.

It is even harder to truly gauge if Glasnow is still on a solid developmental track.

Philosophical Alignment

It is tempting to say that Glasnow was sent down simply because he gave up a lot of runs.  However, it is more likely that his demotion was because he struggled to execute the fundamental Ray Searage pitching philosophy.

Searage has been the pitching coach for the Pittsburgh Pirates for the last 7+ seasons and his philosophy, although never formally published, has been consistent over that time.

• Throw first pitch strikes
• Pitch inside with authority
• Get batters out on 3 pitches or less

Of course there have been other important tenets of the Searage mantra, such as developing a good cut fastball, but these three are the most consistently referenced during his tenure.  Let’s examine how Glasnow fared against each of these three pitching guidelines.

First Pitch Strikes

Glasnow has struggled to find the strike zone this season.  He has thrown 1046 pitches so far this season.  635 of them have been strikes for a 60.7% strike percentage.  Although he is nowhere near Ivan Nova at 67.3%, this is still a respectable number.  It puts Glasnow in the same range as other successful pitchers such as Edison Volquez of the Miami Marlins and Lance Lynn of the St. Louis Cardinals.  Where Glasnow starts to falter is in his first pitch strike percentage, which is the most important strike of them all according to Ray Searage.  In this metric, Glasnow is only getting the first pitch in for a strike 56.6% of the time.  If Glasnow had enough innings to qualify, this would rank him almost at the bottom of major league baseball in this category.

The table below shows how Glasnow compares to the other Pirate starters in first pitch strike percentage.

56.6% first pitch strike percentage is just not good enough for a Ray Searage pupil.

Pitch Inside with Authority

Searage also preaches pitching inside and establishing the inside third of the plate as the pitcher’s domain.  There is a very simple reason for this.  When you are throwing to both the inside and outside part of the plate and you mix in fastballs and off speed pitches, you give the hitter 4 location / speed combinations to worry about instead of two.  If you mix in the ability to also hit the top and bottom of the zone, you just expanded that to 8 different combinations.  Searage doesn’t just say “pitch inside”, he says “pitch inside with authority”.  This means that his pitchers cannot be afraid to hit a few batters along the way to establishing the inner third of the plate as a place where the umpire will call strikes.

So does Glasnow pitch inside with authority?  This is subjective but we can examine the number of times he pitches inside and the results of those pitches. Below are the heat maps for Glasnow for both right and left handed batters.

Graphs courtesy of Brooks Baseball

These graphs are from the catcher’s perspective and it is immediately evident that although Glasnow mixes inside pitches well to right handed batters, he does not pitch inside to left handed batters at all.  In fact, you could say he is avoiding doing so.

The results of these inside pitches are harder to judge, given the small sample size, but we can still measure them.  Right handed batters are hitting for a .419 average on Glasnow’s offerings on the inside third of the strike zone.  Left handed batters are hitting .278.  I am not sure what Ray Searage’s personal definition of “inside with authority” is, but I’ll bet this is not it.

Three Pitches or Less

This is by far my most favorite of the Searage philosophies.  Not only is it effective when the pitcher is dealing, but it speeds up the game and makes it more exciting for the fans.  There are more balls in play and more defensive action.  However, a pitcher can’t just pipe fastballs down the middle and let the other team crush them.  Executing this philosophy requires pitchers to throw to specific spots and induce weak contact when the hitter does make contact.

We all know that Glasnow has not been very good at inducing weak contact.  His hard contact rate of 32.6% is worse than only Gerrit Cole among Pirate starters.  But let’s take a step back and see how he did in getting a batter to so something in three pitches or less.

Over his last 6 starts, Glasnow was able to achieve 3 pitches or less with about 42% of the batters he faced.  Compare this to the rest of the Pirates pitching corps, who all (besides Gerrit Cole) pitch to contact and combine to hit this mark more than 50% of the time.

Over the course of a season, the average pitches thrown to each batter will be the best leading indicator for Searage to use when measuring “3 pitches or less” success.  So far in 2017, Glasnow is averaging 3.93 pitches for each hitter he faces, which is again worst among Pirate starters.

Yet again, Glasnow does not make the grade for one of Ray Searage’s fundamental pitching philosophies.  Glasnow’s best performance in this metric was his last start against the Miami Marlins, however the results were not pretty.  He was torched for 6 earned runs in 4 innings of work.  This is a great example of what can happen when you just throw strikes right down the middle.  To be successful on 3 pitches or less, you have induce weak contact and that comes from varying location and speed with pinpoint precision.  This is something that Glasnow has not been able to accomplish so far in 2017.

Work in the Minors

Tyler Glasnow will undoubtedly be working on these three aspects in his upcoming starts for the AAA Indianapolis Indians.  If he is to make a return to the Pittsburgh Pirates in 2017, he will need to demonstrate an ability to throw first pitch strikes, pitch inside with authority and get hitters out on three pitches or less.