Tyler Glasnow Is Flashing His Best Stuff Now That He’s Healthy

It is getting genuinely difficult to give every high-performing member of the Los Angeles Dodgers their due.

We’ve reached a point where “Dodger Fatigue” is a real condition for baseball fans. When your roster is a laundry list of top-billed stars and future Hall of Famers, individual brilliance tends to get swallowed by the collective machine. If you aren’t leading a Triple Crown category, you’re basically just another guy in blue.

Take Shohei Ohtani, for example. He is currently aiming for his fifth MVP — and his fourth in a row –but the lead story is that he is gunning for a Cy Young. Through four starts, he has a Bond-villain ERA of 0.38 and a 0.75 WHIP. It’s absurd. It’s pervasive. And it’s all we talk about.

Then you have Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the 2025 World Series MVP, who has delivered six quality starts in six outings. He’s pitching to a 2.87 ERA. Typical greatness. Even the gritty stories are taken: Justin Wrobleski, the young southpaw, has stolen headlines with low-strikeout, high-efficiency gems, posting a 1.50 ERA that trails only Ohtani in the National League.

With all that noise, Tyler Glasnow has become the forgotten ace. I’m here to make you remember. 

The Statistical Case for Glasnow

While ERA as a category draws the most eyes, Glasnow leads all of baseball in WHIP at a ridiculous 0.70. He is allowing fewer than one baserunner per inning by a significant margin. He’s currently sporting a 38:7 K:BB ratio across a team-leading 33 innings. He has a 2.45 ERA and a 1.0 bWAR before we’ve even hit May.

This is what Tyler Glasnow looks like when his body cooperates.

The 6-foot-8 right-hander has somewhat been a “what if” story for the better part of a decade. Injuries have hampered him at every turn. It is a genuine tragedy of the modern era that the most starts Glasnow has ever made in a single season is 22, which is a mark he hit in 2024, his first year in Los Angeles.

Even then, he couldn’t pitch down the stretch or in the postseason. But after being healthy in the second half of 2025 and a full, uninterrupted offseason, we are finally seeing the final-boss version of Glasnow.

The Statcast Freak Show

If you want to understand why Glasnow is so difficult to hit, start with his extension.

He is in the 100th percentile. While the average major league pitcher has a release extension of around 6.0 to 6.3 feet in front of the rubber, because of his height and his massive stride toward the plate, Glasnow routinely leads the league with an elite 7.5 to 7.9-foot average extension.

When Glasnow throws a 95.3 mph fastball, the perceived velocity for the hitter is closer to 99 mph. His Baseball Savant page is a sea of red: 98th percentile in Pitching Run Value, 99th percentile in Fastball Run Value, and 94th percentile in xERA (2.17).

But the real evolution is the command.

Solving the Chase and Walk Problem

Last year, Glasnow was in the first percentile in chase rate. Think about that. With his stuff, hitters were somehow refusing to swing at his pitches out of the zone. He was also in the bottom seventh percentile in walk rate.

In 2026, he has completely flipped the script. He’s currently in the 85th percentile in walk rate and the 52nd percentile in chase. His command has been immaculate. When you stop walking people, hitters are forced to be more aggressive, which in turn creates more chase.

The Arsenal Shift

The most interesting part of Glasnow’s 2026 campaign is how he’s actually using his weapons. Back in his Tampa Bay days, he was a fastball merchant, throwing the heater 45% of the time. He kept that high usage in 2024, but the Dodgers’ pitching brain trust has slowly been weaning him off the four-seamer.

This year, his fastball usage is down to 32%. He has pivoted heavily toward his curveball (28%) and his sinker (23%), while dropping the slider usage to 17%.

The curveball, in particular, has been a death sentence for opponents. He’s thrown his knuckle curve 102 times this year to the tune of four hits and 14 strikeouts. That’s a .133 average against. He has also thrown a regular curve 37 times. Zero hits. Nine strikeouts. That’s pure dominance.

The 23-Start Ceiling

We all know the caveat with Glasnow. We’ve known it since he was a prospect in Pittsburgh. It’s the health. He needs to make 23 starts to set a career-high. That seems like a low bar for a 32-year-old All-Star, but for Glasnow, it would be a monumental achievement.

If he stays on the mound, the Dodgers have four legitimate Cy Young candidates in the same rotation once Blake Snell returns.

All stats and rankings were taken prior to play on April 28.