SAN DIEGO -- Tyler Glasnow had run up a full count facing the Padres' Hunter Renfroe, and it had at least parenthetically crossed my mind from the Petco Park press box on this Sunday afternoon that this is precisely when Glasnow needs to "put the foot down," to borrow Clint Hurdle's favorite phrase.
Seriously, forget the slider, fun as it's become. Forget the hammer curve that used to be his parachute in the minors. Forget all the rest of that big arsenal that once earned him ALL-CAPS raves in Baseball America.
Just fire up a four-seamer, and everyone can have a seat.
Sure enough ...
... I no longer know this kid.
Because that up there has no resemblance to the stumbling, trembling, sad-faced, two-and-two-thirds-innings Glasnow of 2017, to say the very least.
"It's different, yeah," he was telling me at his stall after his perfect eighth inning set up the Pirates' 7-5 victory. "I think it's just confidence. I felt like I got my stuff back in the spring, and even having a little bit of success since then showed me that I can do the job at this level. It feels like ..."
Deep breath.
"It feels like I did in the minor leagues, to be honest."
Oh.
TAP ABOVE FOR BOXSCORE, STANDINGS, VIDEOUnderstand, please, for full context: If there were a Hall of Fame for minor-league excellence, Glasnow would be first-ballot, full-wing-to-himself worthy. In 117 starts, he had a 2.02 ERA, a .171 opponents' batting average, and 785 strikeouts over 593 innings. It's entirely possible that his most impressive achievement in that half-decade was staying awake.
Once he got to Pittsburgh ... well, you know.
But that was then, and this is now. And this Glasnow pitched two perfect innings Saturday night — three strikeouts, 21 pitches — then was put right back on the mound Sunday for the first time in his professional career, something Hurdle had been contemplating for a while but this time had no choice. The Pirates had spent their middle relief after Jameson Taillon's abbreviated start, and only baby-faced callup Tanner Anderson was an alternate option to bridge the gap to Felipe Vazquez. That wasn't about to happen with a two-run lead and balls leaping off bats all day.
So ...
"Here it was," the manager recalled thinking of Glasnow's chance. "Let's see it."
He saw it, even if the Padres didn't: 12 pitches, seven strikes. Two were sliders, but all the rest resulted from Elias Diaz putting down a single finger.
"Man, how about Tyler?" Taillon raved. "And after pitching two last night? You kidding me?"
Hurdle went further, praising Glasnow for his professionalism upon entering spring training knowing he'd be a reliever for the first time in his career, as well as for his preparation and focus on that particular role, as well as how he's shown a passion for getting "lots of touches on the ball" to overcome all that old angst that much sooner, as well as the new slimmed-down mental approach:
As the man spoke, "He's not trying to figure anything out."
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After Glasnow got Renfroe, I paid particular attention to his demeanor. Not without cause.
One afternoon in Sarasota, Fla., this past March, when Glasnow benefited from the free-swinging Orioles lunging at pretty much everything he tossed their way, he strutted off the mound. Not egregiously, mind you. But enough that an American League scout watching from the stands texted me up in the press box: "Look at this guy. Thinks he's hot s---. That's his problem." The scout also predicted that, even after Charlie Morton and Gerrit Cole, Glasnow could prove to be Ray Searage's worst nightmare if he ever fulfilled all that potential somewhere else.
I didn't know what to think for myself, beyond having a lifelong respect for this particular scout's baseball acumen. but I did make a point of investing extra time in a conversation with Glasnow after that exhibition, resulting in a column that revealed — to me, anyway — that he was at least tough enough to discuss, openly, unsolicitedly, the 2017 mess. To boot, he had a sense of humor about it.
I stopped at one point and asked if he'd always smiled this much.
“Really? I feel like I’m always kind of positive,” he shot right back at the time. “I mean, when things are bad, when you’re sucking in the big leagues, it’s a little harder.”
So I had all that intangibly in mind as he walked off the mound on this Sunday, completely strut-free. Not even the slightest glove-punch, skip-step, nothing that would signify this strikeout had been the slightest bit special.
Which, in turn, immediately got me thinking of Kyle Crick.
Stay with me on this. It's worth it, I promise.
Two innings earlier, the Padres loaded the bases against Richard Rodriguez and Steven Brault, and Crick was summoned to do the dousing against Christian Villanueva. It didn't start well, with Crick falling behind, 3-1. And it nearly got a whole lot worse when he badly missed Diaz's high target, but all Villanueva could do was foul it off.
Crick got lucky, as he'd confess to me afterward:
But even after that escape, when Diaz set up the next pitch on a different perimeter — outer corner, a spot fraught with extra risk given that home plate umpire Todd Tichenor's strike zone had the consistency of fermented Jell-O — Crick simply followed the single finger, fired a four-seamer with pinpoint precision, and Villanueva whiffed right through it:
This, truth be told, was the pivotal point in this game, even more than Colin Moran's earlier grand slam, and not at all because Crick would later wind up with his first big-league victory.
"What Crick did carried us," Hurdle would say.
But here again, reminding that this occurred two innings before Glasnow, what got my eye was Crick's poise after that third strike. The chin was out, the eyes wide, but there was otherwise no strut, no swagger of any sort. He had faith in his best pitch, he blew it by the batter, and he walked back to the bench.
Now, don't ask why, but it occurred to me spontaneously to ask Glasnow about this sequence and whether or not it had any impact on him.
"Crick? Oh, man, you're talking about my guy now," Glasnow would reply right away. "He's meant everything to me out there."
Nice. Here we go.
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Glasnow and Crick are close in age, Crick being just a year older at 25, and closer in kinship. They're buds.
"We do pretty much everything together," Glasnow elaborated. "Whatever it is, on the field, off the field, video games, going out to eat ... that's us."
They're also, as Crick was quick to stress, catching partners.
"That's the big thing," he said. "Because when you've got a catching partner, and that's got to be someone you can trust."
By both accounts, that's been the case on every level. Glasnow's shared his lowest lows about last summer with Crick. Crick's shared his feelings on being the rookie who was the Pirates' lone big-league acquisition in the Andrew McCutchen trade. They've talked it all out.
They've also just played catch. And it was in one pregame round of that common arm-stretching practice, two months ago at PNC Park, that Crick felt he'd started to truly understand Glasnow.
"If you ask me what I see in Tyler right now when he's pitching, I'm seeing less of him thinking," Crick told me, essentially echoing Hurdle's broader observation. "I mean, when I first got here, we're out there playing catch and he was thinking every throw. I mean every throw."
Not pitching. Throwing when playing catch.
Crick stopped that session at one point, tucked the ball in his back pocket and approached Glasnow.
"Dude, you and I, we've been doing this a long time," Crick recalled saying. "You know how to throw a ball. Stop thinking so much. Your body will take care of that. Give me a chance here. I'm going to back up to where I was. Hit me in the belt. Don't do anything else. Don't worry about what kind of throw. Just hit me in the belt."
Crick stepped back. Glasnow hit him in the belt.
"I honestly think that's where this started," Crick continued. "I mean, we do talk about our pitching, our approaches. We talk about the outings where we don't do well. We'll question each other. We'll challenge each other: Were we the aggressors in a given at-bat? Were we completely in charge out on that mound? Did we have the right conviction?"
That use of 'conviction,' I interjected, is a Searage special.
"You bet, but it means something. If you've got a good fastball and you believe in it ... man, nobody wants to hit that. An angry fastball is still the best pitch we've got. Both of us. And that's what we talk about."
When they're talking about pitching. Not throwing.
"Well, maybe the throwing, too, at times."
Really?
"You seen his slider in the past month?"
I have. Hitters haven't.
"Filthy. Just filthy. We were playing catch a few weeks ago, and he sent that my way with that grip. I couldn't believe it. I told him he has to get that into games."
Sure enough, after work with Searage and Euclides Rojas, it's shown up. At times potently.
"Imagine that guy, with his stuff, with everything he can do, putting it all together. You see him out there — you see what we both did today — we've just got to go out there with the attitude that this is our fastball and you aren't going to hit it. When we get in trouble, we aren't going to get cute. We're going to bring it. And if you think you can hit it, good luck."
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Neither is a finished product. Far from it. But the Pirates' evaluators genuinely liked what they'd seen of Crick in the Giants' system, and every evaluator in the baseball business long ago loved Glasnow's potential, and this season to date has boosted both causes.
Crick's got a 2.40 ERA and 1.30 WHIP in 32 appearances, averaging exactly a strikeout per inning and half as many walks. He's also improving, which means all the more for a rookie, with 19 scoreless appearances out of his past 22.
Glasnow's got a 4.30 ERA and 1.25 WHIP in 27 appearances, and he's struck out 57 in batters in 46 innings of long-ish relief. He's arguably improving even more, to the point where ...
Yeah, I just went ahead asked.
"Do I want to be a starter again?" Glasnow repeated my question back. "Not really. Well, I mean, kind of. Right now, I'm at the point where I'm just worried about ..."
He cut himself off momentarily.
"I'll feel kind of stupid when I give this answer because it's kind of cliched, but I really am just worried about what I have to do right now. Last year, one of my problems was that I got ahead of myself when I pitched. I worried about what it meant, what the next thing was. Now, I'm just worried about what I have to do that game, for that batter. Wherever they put me, they'll put me. I'll play third base if they want."
At that point, David Freese, seated at the next stall, rose up and playfully barked out, "Whoa! Whoa! Easy there!"
"OK, then, center field," Glasnow continued, unabated in the face of one of the team's veteran leaders. "I just want to get out there and pitch well."
They're growing up, Crick and Glasnow and the bullpen as a whole. They've been mostly maddening, but that's part and parcel with young pitchers. Since George Kontos' release in May, the group's got no one out of their 20s.
"We like that, I think. All of us," Glasnow said. "Our mindset is that we're going to prove everyone wrong."
With that, then, before wrapping up, I asked for a guided tour of that final fastball to Renfroe.
"Ha! OK, well, Diaz called fastball, set up outer half and ... I believed in it. I believed I'd get it by him. So when I let it go, I actually threw it too hard and got it up a little, but it was where I wanted. The first two fastballs I threw, he wasn't anywhere close, so I knew if I spun it ... you knew."
He stopped short of the strut. Maybe when he's earned it.