The Tampa Bay Rays held their second live batting practice session Wednesday at their facility in Port Charlotte, and the highlight for the coaching staff and pitchers was watching pitcher Tyler Glasnow, who will likely start Opening Day, throw his first session to hitters.
“He looked tremendous. I can’t imagine what it feels like to throw a baseball like he does,” manager Kevin Cash said afterward. “Just sitting from that catcher point or view or a hitter point of view, it’s amazing how it explodes. Glasnow is pretty special with the combination of weapons that he’s working with — the fastball and curveball, and he’s really working on a slider or cutter which has a chance to be another special pitch for him. His tempo was really good and the velocity looked like it did in October.”
Glasnow threw to first baseman Ji-Man Choi among others in the session, using the time to work on specifics of that third pitch to go along with the near 100 MPH fastball and the curveball.
“I think it was more of the comfort on how to grip it,” Glasnow said. “I never had any data to show me if it was good or not. I came down to Florida early and we have readily-available data to show that when you throw it [with a certain grip] it’s good. It’s just easy to get a foundation of what a good pitch actually is when you have live data.”
Glasnow said he threw the slider some during the offseason, but because there was no advanced tracking equipment available then, he couldn’t determine if his feel matched up to what the numbers would be.
Steve Carney is the founder and publisher of St. Pete Nine. One of the people most associated with baseball coverage in Tampa Bay, he spent 13 seasons covering the Rays for flagship radio station WDAE, first as producer of Rays Radio broadcasts, then as beat reporter beginning in 2011. He likes new analytics and aged bourbon, and is the owner of one of the ugliest knuckleballs ever witnessed by baseball scouts.
