Headlines

Go To Pro Hockey Rumors
Go To Hoops Rumors

Tyler Glasnow

Rays Acquire Mike Ford From Yankees

By | at

The Rays have acquired first baseman Mike Ford from the Yankees for cash considerations and a player to be named later, both clubs announced. Ford has been optioned to Triple-A Durham. To clear 40-man roster space, Tampa Bay transferred righty Tyler Glasnow from the 10-day to the 60-day injured list.

Ford has appeared in the majors in each of the past three seasons. The left-handed hitter showed plenty of offensive promise as a rookie, when he raked at a .259/.350/.559 clip with twelve home runs over his first 163 MLB plate appearances. Ford, whom the Mariners had selected in the Rule 5 draft the previous year but returned in Spring Training, looked like a potential long-term contributor in the Bronx after that strong debut. He hasn’t been able to follow up on that over the past two years, though.

In 156 plate appearances since the start of 2020, Ford has mustered just a .134/.250/.276 line with five homers. With Luke Voit tearing the cover off the ball last year en route to an MLB-best 22 homers, Ford didn’t have much of an opportunity for regular playing time. Voit’s injury issues this season opened up some recent run for Ford, but the 28-year-old didn’t take advantage. He’s hit just .133/.278/.283 in 72 plate appearances this season with a fairly significant bump in his strikeout rate. That led the Yankees to designate him for assignment last weekend.

Ford’s MLB career is still a collection of fairly small samples. He’s tallied just 319 total plate appearances at the highest level, with a resulting .199/.301/.422 line. Ford has a much bigger body of work at Triple-A, where’s hit a robust .268/.359/.501 in parts of four seasons. With a quality minor league track record, a pair of minor league option years remaining and a low acquisition cost, the Rays felt Ford was a worthwhile pick-up.

Ji-Man Choi has hit very well in limited time between a pair of injured list stints this season. He returned to the lineup this week and figures to assume much of the playing time at first base. Tampa Bay has primarily rotated Austin Meadows and Randy Arozarena between DH and the corner outfield this year. Ford’s likely being brought on as an optionable depth player, and he adds another lefty bat to a first base/DH mix that also includes righties Yandy Díaz and Mike Brosseau.

Glasnow’s move to the 60-day IL is unsurprising. The 27-year-old went on the IL this week after an MRI revealed a partial tear of his UCL. He’s hoping to rehab the injury and avoid Tommy John surgery, but he told reporters after the diagnosis his goal was to make it back for a potential playoff run. Regardless of whether he’ll be able to return at the tail end of the regular season or during the postseason, it never seemed plausible he’d be back within two months.

Brendan Kuty of NJ Advance Media reported that the Rays had acquired Ford shortly before the official announcement. Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times (Twitter link) first reported Ford would be optioned to Triple-A.

Glasnow: Enforcing Sticky Stuff Rule Midseason Is “Insane” And Contributed To Injury

By | at

Rays starter Tyler Glasnow hit the IL with a partially torn UCL and a flexor tendon strain today, and he feels that MLB’s decision to finally enforce the foreign substance rules on the books is a contributing factor.  In advance of MLB’s new enforcement policy, Glasnow ceased usage of sunscreen, changing the grips on his fastball and curveball.  Here’s what Glasnow had to say (Bally Sports Florida sideline reporter Tricia Whitaker has the video here):

“Do it in the offseason, give us a chance to adjust to it. But I just threw 80-something, 70-whatever innings, and then you just told me I can’t use anything in the middle of the year? I had to change everything I’d been doing the entire season. Everything, out of the window, I had to start doing something completely new.

And then I’m telling you, I truly believe, that’s why I got hurt. Me throwing 100 and being 6’7″ is why I got hurt, but that contributed. I’m just frustrated that they don’t understand how hard it is to pitch, one, but to tell us to do something completely different in the middle of the season is insane. It’s ridiculous. There has to be some give and take here. You can’t just take away everything and not add something. Pitchers need to be able to have some sort of control or some sort of grip on the ball. And I just don’t want this to happen to somebody else, I don’t want a fastball to sail away and hit somebody in the face like it already has.

I understand you need to take an aggressive approach here, but I just think people are going about it all wrong. And I’m sitting here, my lifelong dream, I want to go out and win a Cy Young, I want to be an All-Star, and then now it’s all just shit on. Now it’s over. I have to try and rehab and come back in the playoffs. I’m clearly frustrated…people need to figure this out. You can’t just tell us to use nothing. It’s crazy.”

According to ESPN’s Jeff Passan, Glasnow’s sentiments are “shared by a lot of people across baseball — and not just players.”  Dodgers righty Trevor Bauer is another pitcher who takes issue with MLB’s timing on the enforcement, tweeting, “They’ve knowingly swept this under the rug for 4 years. Now they implement a knee jerk reaction to shifting public perception. Hard to hear them talk about “competitive integrity” when they have no integrity to begin with.”

The pitchers who have been speaking up recently on this topic have sound points: this issue could have been tackled with care in the offseason, and MLB should have tried to get players on board.  As the Nationals’ Max Scherzer put it, “The players should have a say in this. Unfortunately, I don’t think we will. It just appears that MLB is going to do whatever they want with this.”  The use of “sticky stuff” by pitchers has been an unenforced rule for many years, and forcing pitchers to go cold turkey could bring unintended consequences – including injuries.  MLB’s new “enhanced enforcements” go into effect Monday, though some pitchers have clearly been weaning off the sticky stuff this month.

Rays Tyler Glasnow Placed On Injured List With Partial UCL Tear

By | at

2:08 pm: Glasnow’s MRI revealed a partial tear of his ulnar collateral ligament, as well as a flexor strain in his forearm, Adam Berry of MLB.com was among those to relay. It’s a brutal development, considering that UCL tears and flexor strains are often precursors to a Tommy John procedure. The current hope is that Glasnow can rehab the injury without surgery, relays Jeff Passan of ESPN, but it seems he’s in for a significant absence even in the best case scenario. The Rays haven’t released a formal timeline for his return, but he’s been placed on the 10-day injured list.

9:44 am: The Rays are sending Tyler Glasnow for an MRI on his elbow after the right-hander left last night’s start after four innings, Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times was among those to report. The team announced Glasnow’s issue as elbow inflammation, with the pitcher telling reporters he felt “a little tug” and “tightness” in the area.

It’s an ominous-sounding diagnosis, but Glasnow himself didn’t sound overly concerned. “I think I got it relatively early. I just was like, I don’t want to go back out and chance it,” he said (via Topkin). “The (velocity) and everything was still there. But it just felt not right.” He did note, though, that the issue was more than mere discomfort. Glasnow missed most of the 2019 season with a forearm strain and suggested there’s a possibility his current issue is similar.

Certainly, the Rays will be holding their breath as they await the results of the MRI. Glasnow is amidst a stellar season, having worked to a 2.66 ERA/2.83 SIERA. He ranks fifth among qualified pitchers in strikeout rate (36.2%) and sixth in strikeout/walk rate differential (28.2 percentage points). He’s also been a true workhorse for a Rays pitching staff that otherwise tends to heavily leverage matchups, as Glasnow is tied for second in the American League with 88 innings pitched.

Players Avoiding Arbitration: 1/15/21

By and | at

The deadline to exchange arbitration figures is today at 1pm ET. As of this morning, there were 125 arbitration-eligible players who’d yet to agree to terms on their contract for the upcoming 2021 season. Arbitration is muddier than ever before thanks to the shortened 2020 schedule, which most believe will lead to record number of arb hearings this winter. Be that as it may, it’s still reasonable to expect dozens of contractual agreements to filter in over the next couple of hours.

We’ll highlight some of the more high-profile cases in separate posts with more in-depth breakdowns, but the majority of today’s dealings will be smaller-scale increases that don’t radically alter a team’s payroll or a player’s trade candidacy. As such, we’ll just run through most of today’s agreements in this post.

I’ve embedded MLBTR’s 2021 Arbitration Tracker in the post (those in the mobile app or viewing on mobile web will want to turn their phones sideways). Our tracker can be sorted by team, by service time and/or by Super Two status, allowing users to check the status on whichever groups of players they like. You can also check out Matt Swartz’s projected arbitration salaries for this year’s class, and we’ll do a quick sentence on each player’s agreement at the bottom of this post as well, with the most recent agreements sitting atop the list.

Today’s Agreements (chronologically, newest to oldest)

Read more

Rays Name Glasnow, Snell Starters For First Two Games Of World Series

By | at

Blake Snell will end his streak of starting game ones for the Rays, but he’s not going to  wait long to take the hill. Snell will get the ball in game two against the Dodgers, while Tyler Glasnow will toe the rubber in the opening game of the World Series, per MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand (via Twitter).

Clayton Kershaw is set to oppose Glasnow in game one for the Dodgers. Los Angeles was able to escape the NLCS despite just one so-so outing from Kershaw, but they’re surely expecting more from the all-time great as the World Series kicks off on Tuesday.

For the Rays, expect similar usage from their pitching staff over the first couple of games, but it will be anyone’s guess from there. With days off after game two and game five, manager Kevin Cash will have more options available to him. The days off mean the Rays will probably drop a pitcher from their 15-man unit in order to bring a position player back into the mix, per Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times. The Rays went with a 14-and-14 pitch-to-hitter balance for the first few rounds of the playoffs, only adding the additional arm for the 7-day, 7-game ALCS.

Rays starters don’t tend to pitch far beyond the fifth inning regardless, but the extra rest gives Cash some flexibility for how to deploy his arms. Charlie Morton would be on five days rest for a game three start, assuming Cash decides to keep his regular rotation intact. He could then turn to Ryan Yarbrough for game four, or return to Glasnow on three days’ rest.

Purely speculating, Josh Fleming and Jose Alvarado were the ’last in,’ so to speak, having been added to the roster for the ALCS. Alvarado struggled with his command, while the Rays may not feel the need for a longman like Fleming given the extra days of rest. Shane McClanahan, who made his big league debut during the postseason, could also be an option for removal. On the offensive end, Brett Phillips and Nate Lowe both made the playoff roster for a previous round. Given how much the Rays value outfield defense, Phillips might be the more natural add, especially with Ji-Man Choi healthy and ostensibly filling Lowe’s potential role on the roster.

Yankees, Rays Set Game 5 Starters

By | at

It will be Gerrit Cole against Tyler Glasnow in tomorrow’s deciding Game 5 of the ALDS matchup between the Yankees and Rays.  New York recorded a 5-1 win in Game 4 tonight to force the winner-take-all contest on Friday at Petco Park (the Rays will be the designated home team).

It isn’t any shock that Cole will get the call for the Yankees’ biggest game of the season.  Signed to a nine-year, $324MM free agent deal last winter, Cole lived up to that ace billing in the regular season and is 2-0 in two playoff starts.  The home run issues that plagued Cole during the season have again been something of an issue in the postseason, as he has surrendered three long balls in 13 innings of 3.46 ERA pitching during these playoffs.

Two of those homers came in Game 1 of the ALDS, though Cole held on for a quality start in allowing three runs on six hits and two walks over six innings of work, while recording eight strikeouts.  Counting the regular season, Game 5 will be the fifth time the Rays have faced Cole in 2020.  It will also mark the first time in Cole’s eight-year career that he has started a game on only three days’ rest, though it’s safe to assume manager Aaron Boone will have his entire cadre of pitchers available should Cole run into any early struggles.

The same tactic will almost surely apply for Glasnow and the Rays, as Glasnow will start on just two days’ rest after pitching five innings in Game 2 (allowing four runs on three hits and three walks, with 10 strikeouts).  Given the even shorter amount of time between games for Glasnow, he might also be a candidate for a quick hook from Rays manager Kevin Cash.  It is also possible Glasnow could be less a proper starter and more of a glorified opener, as Tampa Bay would be pleased to get as many innings as they can from Glasnow before turning things over to their deep bullpen.

Tyler Glasnow Returns To Rays’ Camp

By | at

11:00am: Glasnow previously tested positive for COVID-19, thus explaining his absence, as Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times was among those to cover (Twitter links). Fortunately, he never experienced significant symptoms and has obviously now been cleared of the disease.

Glasnow says he fully expects to be ready for the Opening Day roster.

10:05am: Rays righty Tyler Glasnow finally appeared in Summer Camp today. Better still, he was able to take the hill in the team’s intrasquad game, as Juan Toribio of MLB.com covers on Twitter.

One of the highest-ceiling hurlers in all of baseball, Glasnow just might hold the key to the Rays’ hopes in 2020. The 26-year-old looked like an elite starter in an injury-shortened 2019 season, working to a 1.78 ERA with 11.3 K/9 and 2.1 BB/9 over 60 2/3 frames.

The big stuff was on display this spring, as Glasnow reemerged after offseason wrist surgery (which itself followed a lengthy layoff for a forearm strain). The hope was that the coronavirus pause would give Glasnow a chance to rest up fully in preparation for a 60-game sprint.

Anticipation met the realities of the covid world when Summer Camp opened and Glasnow was nowhere to be seen. We still don’t know what precipitated his absence, though answers could now be forthcoming.

With the delayed training, it’s fair to wonder whether Glasnow will be at full tilt when the season opens in just a week and a half. But the fact he is throwing multiple frames today suggests he has maintained a throwing program and is in good health. It’s a significant boon to the Rays’ outlook.

Rays Have Opened Extension Talks With Glasnow, Meadows

By | at

The Rays have approached Tyler Glasnow’s representatives at Wasserman and Austin Meadows’ representatives at Excel Sports about potential long-term deals for the pair of burgeoning stars, reports Marc Topkin of the Tampa Bay Times.

There’s no indication that talks with either party have progressed beyond the preliminary stage, but the reaction from the pair is notable. Both say they’re open to such an arrangement, with Meadows saying he “definitely would be open to something like that” but Glasnow taking a bit more reserved approach. While the right-hander acknowledged that he’d listen to offers, he also made clear that he doesn’t want to “sell [himself] short” and that he has “no problem going year-to-year.”

Looking at the two as separate cases, Glasnow’s situation is a bit trickier. The right-hander was utterly dominant when healthy in 2019, pitching to a 1.78 ERA with averages of 11.3 strikeouts, 2.1 walks and 0.59 home runs allowed per nine innings pitched. Unfortunately for both him and the Rays, a forearm strain limited the towering righty to 60 2/3 innings.

Glasnow was one of the game’s premier pitching prospects for years and, since being traded to the Rays, has broken out with 116 2/3 innings of 2.94 ERA ball and nearly 11 punchouts per nine frames. He doesn’t have a long track record in the Majors, though, and his platform season was noticeably light on workload. Throw in that he’s a Super Two player who’s already set to earn $2.05MM in 2020, and it becomes a bit muddier when trying to determine what the two sides might deem a fair price point.

For context, Glasnow’s own teammate, Blake Snell, holds the record for largest contract ever signed by a pitcher with between two and three years of big league service time. Snell signed a five-year, $50MM contract just last spring, but he wasn’t a Super Two player at the time of that agreement. He was, however, fresh off a Cy Young win, which makes his case perhaps something of an outlier. The second-largest deal ever inked by a two-plus pitcher was German Marquez, who landed a five-year, $43MM deal (also last winter). Marquez wasn’t a Super Two player but tossed thrice as many innings as Glasnow in his platform season. Luis Severino was a Super Two with two-plus years of service time when he signed a four-year, $40MM deal with a club option for a fifth season in February 2019, but he was projected to earn more than double the $2.05MM to which Glasnow agreed for the upcoming season (by virtue of his 2017-18 workload).

The unique nature of Glasnow’s situation and his stated willingness to go year-to-year might make an agreement tough to hammer out. A healthy and productive season out of the righty, after all, would lead to a substantial raise. Mike Foltynewicz played out the 2018 season as a Super Two player on a $2.2MM salary and, after 183 innings of 2.85 ERA ball, saw a 149 percent raise to $5.475MM for the 2019 campaign. Even with some regression in terms of his ERA, Glasnow could be looking at similar financial upside if he can rack up the innings. There’s also virtually no circumstance in which he’d be in for a pay cut in 2021, so he’s looking at a minimum of $4.1MM over the next two seasons as it is. At the very least, he has a bit of security on his side now that he’s into arbitration.

Meadows is in a different situation. The 24-year-old has a year and 74 days of service, which places him two full seasons away from reaching arbitration. Meadows slashed .291/.364/.558 with 33 home runs, 29 doubles, seven triples and 12 steals in 591 plate appearances during a breakout 2019 campaign with the Rays. In doing so, he cemented himself as a fixture in the lineup for the foreseeable future. The Rays’ interest in keeping him cost-controlled is plenty sensible, as Tampa Bay has routinely had to move on from its players as their salaries escalate in arbitration (Tommy Pham and Corey Dickerson are recent examples in the outfield). That looks particularly likely to be the case with Meadows iff he goes year-to-year, as his power numbers would play quite well when he does reach arbitration in the 2021-22 offseason.

Looking for some historical comps, Christian Yelich’s first extension — seven years and $49.57MM — is the largest ever signed by a player with between and two years of service. Ronald Acuna Jr. secured a $100MM payday with less than a year of service time, although that deal was an outlier and required him surrendering four would-be free-agent seasons in the process. Something closer to the first Yelich extension is a likelier base point, but that deal is five years old, so Meadows’ camp could aim to set a new precedent.

In the event that one or both do put pen to paper, the Rays’ 2020 payroll figures to be largely unaffected. Tampa Bay is set to again field one of the lowest-cost (but most-talented) rosters in baseball, with a projected Opening Day mark of just under $71MM. The Rays have about $34MM in guaranteed money on the books both in 2021 and in 2022, though, and that number dips to $24MM by the 2023 season. Fitting contract extensions for Meadows and/or Glasnow into the long-term budget shouldn’t be much of a reach — if the involved parties can years and dollars.

NL Central Notes: Pirates, Lorenzen, Chatwood

By | at

The Pirates were “behind the times” in their approach to developing pitchers under the previous front-office/coaching regime, right-hander Tyler Glasnow opines in a fascinating interview with Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Glasnow details the manner in which the Pirates emphasized pitching down and inside even as the rest of the league evolved to attacking the top of the strike zone with four-seamers and ramping up the usage of breaking balls. The right-hander calls the Pirates’ approach “a good strategy for [2013-15]” but an outdated one in the current era of data-driven approaches to pitching and game-planning. Glasnow explains how he began working at the top of the strike zone on his own toward the end of his time as a Pirate — he was never approached by the club about doing so — and that was the first thing the Rays encouraged him to do following the trade. The interview is rife with interesting (and, if you’re a Pirates fan, frustrating) quotes from Glasnow and is well worth a full look regardless of which team you follow.

Taking a look elsewhere in the division…

  • The “two-way player” criteria established by Major League Baseball within this winter’s slate of rule changes puts National League clubs at a disadvantage, writes Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic (subscription required). The rules, which stipulate that a pitcher who wishes to gain two-way designation must start 20 games as a position player (with three plate appearances per start), appear to have been written with Shohei Ohtani in mind (and perhaps Brendan McKay) but don’t allow for someone like the Reds’ Michael Lorenzen to easily attain that status. Lorenzen played 29 games in center last season, including six starts. In two of those instances, he played every inning of an extra-inning game in the outfield, and in another he came in to throw two innings of relief before returning to center. Lorenzen called the criteria “obnoxious” in chatting with Rosenthal, who notes that the Reds are among the teams that have approached the league about the issue. Over the past two seasons, Lorenzen has batted .241/.302/.468 with five home runs in 87 plate appearances. He logged 89 innings in center field last season after serving as a frequent pinch-hitter a year prior in 2018.
  • Cubs skipper David Ross has at least considered utilizing righty Tyler Chatwood as a multi-inning reliever, he tells Gordon Wittenmyer of the Chicago Sun-Times. Ross still calls Chatwood the favorite for the fifth slot in the rotation, but he also points to Chatwood hitting 99 mph out of the bullpen and the fact that he pitched in every inning while functioning in various roles last season. Ross likens Chatwood to Kenta Maeda, suggesting that he could function as a starter for much of the season before shifting to a multi-inning relief option late in the year and potentially into the postseason. If Chatwood once again struggles as a starter early in the season, it seems likely the organization will shift him back into that role and look to alternative options in the rotation.

Pitcher Notes: Rays, Glasnow, Mets, Wacha, Cardinals, Flaherty

By | at

While recovering from November wrist surgery, Tyler Glasnow is tinkering with his arsenal. The big right-hander plans on ditching his changeup and replacing it with a splitter, tweets MLB.com’s Juan Toribio . Glasnow’s changeup has never been a primary feature of his arsenal, topping at a 10.3% usage rate in 2017. It also hasn’t been a particularly effective pitch, save for in 2019 when hitters managed to slug just .125 against it, albeit in very limited usage (3.5%). It’s certainly intriguing to dream on a splitter to compliment Glasnow’s two lockdown offerings, but the pitch will have to survive spring training before taking on much (if any) significance. On a night of high drama, let’s check in on a couple other pitchers…

  • Michael Wacha recognizes the starting depth he will be contending against in Mets camp this spring, but he’s undaunted, per Newsday’s Tim Healey. After all, as Healey points out, Wacha twice fought his way back into the Cardinals rotation last season after time in the bullpen. Of course, that might also be a sign that he’s the likeliest of the Mets’ six rotation candidates to start the year out of the money (both literally and figuratively, given the incentives in Wacha’s contract for games started). Wacha finished last season with a 4.76 ERA/5.61 FIP across 126 2/3 innings, and he’s only twice crossed the 150 inning threshold. It’ll be an uphill climb for Wacha to make the rotation by opening day, but it’s not impossible. Given the injury rate, there’s a decent chance he finds his way into the rotation at some point in 2020 regardless.
  • Jack Flaherty isn’t eligible for arbitration until after the 2020 season, which means he can’t test free agency until following 2023, but the Cardinals ought to do their due diligence in locking him up now, writes Ben Frederickson of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Easier said than done of course, especially with a player who has already shown signs of understanding his tremendous value. Frederickson recounts Flaherty’s rejection of the Cardinals salary offer before last season, which cost him $10,000, though the penalty was worth it from Flaherty’s perspective. The statement he was able to make about the current system was of bigger importance to the Cardinals’ ace. That’s a good sign in terms of Flaherty’s character and competitive spirit, but perhaps less so for Cardinals fans hoping for news of an early extension. Flaherty’s displeasure with the arbitration system has little to do with the Cardinals, of course, but after a dominant 2019 in which he posted a 2.75 ERA/3.46 FIP, including a mind-boggling 0.91 ERA in the second half, it’s understandable for Flaherty to be at least a little displeased at making close to the league minimum.
Show all

MLB Trade Rumors is not affiliated with Major League Baseball, MLB or MLB.com

hide arrowsFOX Sports Engage Network scroll to top