Tyler Glasnow has, in a general sense, been one of the National League's best pitchers this year. But it hasn't been without his clunky outings. One such outing came earlier this month against the New York Yankees, wherein the starter allowed five earned runs across six innings.
Saturday's start against the Angels, though, represented a continued return to form for Glasnow since that June 9th start. Having thrown seven shutout innings last time out against Kansas City, Glasnow was again dominant for the Los Angeles Dodgers on Saturday night.
He threw another seven innings, allowing two runs (one earned) and striking out 10 Angel hitters. It was his seventh start of double-digit strikeouts this year. Perhaps most notably, though, it was his first start without a walk allowed since April 21st.
Interestingly, the Angels represent one of the league's lowest swing rate teams. They haven't parlayed that patience into a high walk rate, but their Swing% ranks only 19th in the league. Glasnow was able to work around that lack of swings by working heavily within the strike zone and using his stuff in order to avoid contact, both inside and out of the zone.
Aside from the strikeout rate and lack of walks, the contact quality on the part of Angel hitters was probably Glasnow's most impressive element. He's had lower hard contact rates this year, but a roughly 23 percent Hard% serves as one of his five lowest rates against this year. The Soft%, though, was his highest by a very wide margin. Angels hitters made soft contact nearly half the time (46.2 percent).
And that's the thing about Glasnow when he's on. You're going to get strikeouts based on his pure stuff. But even when contact is made, it hasn't been of a high enough quality to actually hurt him at any point this year. Even with the occasional dud of an outing, this is the version of Tyler Glasnow we've seen more often than not.
For a Dodgers rotation that is at the end of its depth with recent injuries, the value of that type of stability cannot be overstated.