PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. _ It's hardly a secret that the Pirates bungled Tyler Glasnow's development, failing to juice much of anything out of the 6-foot-8 right-hander and eventually handing him to the Tampa Bay Rays at an absurdly low price.
But speaking Sunday morning at Charlotte Sports Park before a spring training game against his former team, Glasnow explained just how bad things really were and why he thinks the Pirates were "behind the times."
Glasnow was not mean or mad. He was measured and simply trying to honestly answer what he was asked, though it's hard to not take the entire thing as some damning criticism of the Pirates' former regime.
"We did nothing in Pittsburgh, and we do a lot here," Glasnow said, half-joking about his former employer and why he's flourished with the Rays, where he went 6-1 with a 1.78 ERA in 2019, alternating between unhittable and unhealthy.
Whether or not Glasnow was serious hardly mattered. The takeaway here is how alarmingly bad the Pirates' former pitching plan truly was and how they frittered away one of Major League Baseball's best young pitchers because they never evolved.
Glasnow did give the Pirates credit. Pitching inside and pounding sinkers at the bottom of the strike zone did work for awhile and led to three consecutive playoff appearances.
But they also never evolved. While opposing teams targeted the top of the strike zone, the Pirates doubled down, even with Glasnow, whose fastball-curveball combo is perfectly suited to baffle hitters at the top of the strike zone.
"In Pittsburgh it was more that they had success in 2013-15 with throwing in and down," Glasnow said. "It was pre-advanced stuff, in their defense, to where it was just kind of like, 'This worked in the past. Let's do this,' as opposed to finding the concrete evidence or data to support what your stuff is.
"If you struggled, they typecast you into a certain role. 'This tends to work, so if you're struggling, here's some stuff that we know works.' "
The Pirates' philosophy worked for Francisco Liriano, JA Happ and others, but it runs counter to the talents of some of their recent arms, guys such as Glasnow, Gerrit Cole and Shane Baz, pitchers they never maximized and eventually gifted to other teams.
Glasnow said he was never approached by former pitching coach Ray Searage or anyone else in the organization about pitching up in the zone. In 2018, as he was reduced to a long-relief role, Glasnow said he started to pick up with his own two eyes that his stuff played pretty well at the top of the zone.
"Toward the end of my time in Pittsburgh I was starting to do my own stuff because it wasn't working for me," Glasnow said. "I knew I needed to find something. I think I figured out that at the top of the zone, my stuff would play better. Coming over here, they already knew everything on why I would be good."
A couple things to that point:
_ The Rays are known as arguably baseball's most innovative team, and they deserve credit for trying anything and everything to gain an advantage. But this, with all due respect, is not that.
_ It's more about the Rays being logical or ... not dumb.
_ To the Pirates' credit, the changes they made this offseason addressed these concerns. New pitching coach Oscar Marin is, by all accounts, on the cutting edge of technology, and Pittsburgh has stopped treating its pitchers like a factory, where Cole is told to pitch like Hector Noesi.
Glasnow has also followed the career path of Mitch Keller, who struggled last year but has shown some very good signs this spring. Although they only talked some, being a couple years apart, Glasnow said he thinks Keller will enjoy a different fate.
"I bet he's gonna go shove," Glasnow said. "He's disgusting. He'll figure it out."
Pirates fans should certainly hope so, as it was apparently really, really bad with the old group. For example:
_ Glasnow was never instructed to pitch at the top of the zone despite numbers _ available publicly _ telling everyone that he should be doing exactly that. Left-to-right, here's how opposing hitters fared against Glasnow in terms of slugging percentage while he was with the Pirates: .431/.755/.433 at the bottom compared to .474/.292/.067 at the top.
_ In terms of whiff percentage, Glasnow was at 8.82/5.19/4.35 at the bottom compared to 14.43/14.81/12.28 at the top.
_ The most damning piece of evidence involves what happened once Glasnow got to Tampa. Focusing solely on whiff rate, those three numbers at the top of the zone rose to 16.67/24.74/11.94.
What this tells us is that the Pirates prioritized their own comfortability or belief that what they were doing was right over the individual needs of a pitcher. Glasnow fared markedly better at the top of the strike zone but was basically forced to be something he's not.
"It was a good strategy for (2013-15)," Glasnow said, "but then coming over here and getting direct feedback on why my stuff is good and understanding it more helped me a lot."
The Pirates were also woefully behind when it came to how they prepared their pitchers.
"There wasn't any advanced stuff," Glasnow said. "There was nothing. I could go maybe check my spin on a computer, but it was very much like, 'Don't worry about that, go and compete. I think a lot of it was, when in doubt, kind of do the inside, downhill-and-down stuff.
"I think they were behind the times on that."
It's easy to tell that Glasnow is now pretty happy. He's screwing around with a splitter that he may add to his already deadly arsenal, and he's allowed to pitch the way he should be pitching _ at the top of the zone, with plenty of power blended with a hammer curve.
The Pirates' philosophy has also changed, with manager Derek Shelton (and Marin) modernizing their entire approach. It's just a shame for fans of Pittsburgh baseball that it all happened a couple years too late.
"Coming over and talking to (Rays pitching coach) Kyle (Snyder), I think the overall atmosphere ... I do better when it's, 'Relax and go play,' " Glasnow said. "I was also young in Pittsburgh. I was trying to get acclimated to the big leagues. Having some success on a new team helped create a new pathway for me.
"A lot of it was a new setting. A lot of it, too, was a different philosophy of pitching and using my stuff."
