Tyler Glasnow’s new third pitch was the biggest story of the Rays’ 2021 Spring Training. It’s the kind of story one hears every year — the pitcher version of the “Best Shape Of His Life” narratives — and often new pitches don’t amount to much. But for a two-pitch pitcher like Glasnow there’s an extra level of interest, and some of the early reports were ear-catching: On Neil Solondz’s This Week in Rays Baseball podcast, pitching coach Kyle Snyder described it as potentially “a 93 mph cutter.”
Glasnow showed the new pitch in Spring Training games, proving that it was real, but the shape and speed wasn’t consistent, and Spring Training camera angles are poor, which made it difficult to tell exactly what the new pitch was.