What should we expect from Tyler Glasnow in his first major league season?

The highly anticipated debut of Tyler Glasnow is right around the corner; let’s not panic if he doesn’t come out of the gate as a flame-throwing ace.

While the Pirates haven’t blown anyone away this off-season with their seemingly lackluster moves, many fans are still excited for the upcoming season because of the imminent arrivals of the team’s top prospects: Josh Bell, Jameson Taillon, Alen Hanson, and, most notably, Tyler Glasnow. These players provide a glimpse of hope at how dynamic this team can be in the years to come. All four of the aforementioned players are top 100 prospects in the game, and all should reach the major league team at some point in 2016.

Glasnow is clearly the most anticipated prospect of the bunch. He’s the top prospect in the Pirates’ system, and a top 10 prospect in all of baseball. He’s completely dominated his minor league opposition, to the tune of a 2.07 ERA and a 1.06 WHIP. He’s likely to be called up in June, as the team and fans alike hope they have another Gerrit Cole in the wings, or better.

But what can we expect from Glasnow in his rookie season? If he doesn’t drop a sub-four ERA, was it a disappointing rookie campaign? Let’s take a look at some of the best pitchers in the game and how they did in their rookie years as a comparison.

Gerrit Cole was the last Pirates’ pitcher to have as anticipated a debut as Glasnow. He had a quality rookie campaign, pitching to a 3.22 ERA and threw 100 strikeouts on the nose. If Glasnow pitches like Cole did in his rookie year, we would have nothing to complain about.

Zack Greinke had one of the lowest regular season ERAs of all time last year, posting a mark of 1.66. In his rookie campaign, he held a 3.97 ERA, but had a WAR of 3.6. Not too shabby either.

How about Clayton Kershaw, widely regarded as the best pitcher of our generation? He pitched to a 4.26 ERA in his rookie campaign. David Price? A 1.93 ERA in just 14 innings of mostly relief work in his rookie year, then a 4.42 ERA in his sophomore season. Max Scherzer? 3.05 ERA. Madison Bumgarner? Like Price, he was called up and pitched mostly in relief in his rookie year and had a 1.80 ERA in 10 innings of work, then an ERA of 3.00 in the following season. Jon Lester? 4.76 ERA. Felix Hernandez? He bucks the trend with a 2.67 ERA, but did pitch to a 4.51 ERA in his sophomore season across 31 starts.

These are just a few names, but they’re arguably the best pitchers over the past five years in all of baseball. And we can see that, outside of King Felix, even the great pitchers don’t come up and light the world on fire; only Hernandez had an ERA under 3.00 in his first season as a starter. Sure, some rookies come out of the gate and pitch like the future aces they’ll be, but they’re few and far between. Typically, rookies take time to adjust to the big leagues; the talent gap between Triple-A and the big leagues is far larger than any gap between any of the minor league levels, and even the best prospects see their share of struggles. Glasnow will have to adjust to big league hitting, then big league hitting will adjust to him. If he gets hit hard in his rookie season, it’s to be expected.

If Glasnow pitches below a 4.00 ERA, I’ll be happy. Even if he pitches to an ERA in the fours, no one should panic. What we should be focused on, most importantly, are his walk rate, if he can maintain a high strikeout rate, and if he can last deep into games. The Pirates shouldn’t be relying on Glasnow as a part of the team’s success in 2016, as no team should count on a rookie in his debut season.

Regardless of how Glasnow performs with the Pirates this upcoming season, we, as fans, should be excited about what the future holds. I like to think of the ceiling for Glasnow to be as high as Randy Johnson. Both are tall flamethrowers, and if Glasnow comes anywhere close to Johnson’s career numbers, well, that’d be just swell.

Oh, and Johnson had an ERA of 4.82 in his first full season.

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