clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile

Filed under:

Tommy Can You Hear Me?

Another day, another atrocious Tom Glavine start. He looks like a complete amateur out there, and at this point I have as little faith in him to throw a quality game as I do in Victor Zambrano. This rotation right now, in decreasing order of my confidence, looks like:

Pedro Martinez
Aaron Heilman
Jae Seo
Tom Glavine
Victor Zambrano

The list is not drawn to scale, for a realistic list would show a much wider gap between El Rey and the rest of the rotation.

Glavine's biggest problem this season has been walks. He has already walked 22 batters this season in 30.2 innings. He walked 70 batters last season in 212.1 innings. His strikeout rate is actually way up: 5.28 K/9 compared to 4.62 last season, 4.03 in 2003, and 5.09 and 4.76 in his final two years with the Braves.

Glavine is also getting hit pretty hard, so my guess is that he has lost a lot of command on his fastball. He isn't getting calls off of the plate as he did in the old days, but he should still have good enough control to spot the ball on the corners of the plate but still within the strike zone. He is missing his targets consistently, is falling behind in counts, and is subsequently giving up tons of walks and is getting demolished when he can finally get pitches in the zone.

I don't think he's completely lost it. He's not an entirely different pitcher than he was last year, and I think if he can settle down and return to his normal walk rates he can at least be an average-to-above average pitcher this season.