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Posted at 10:00 AM EST.

1:05 PM EST. Marcus Stroman (RHP) may have found some form of late, posting very serviceable skills in each of his past four starts. However, the Blue Jays and Stroman do not have appeal as the chalk. Stroman  still lacks the strikeout skills of a true impact player. It's important to realize that Stroman's 2017 success was fueled by good luck; specifically a favorable strand percentage. It's the opposite story this year. It's worth noting that Stroman struggled with shoulder inflammation going back to March and he went on the DL for five weeks in May with a 7.71 ERA, suggesting his early season struggles were health-related. He's been modestly better since his return, but the optimism is tempered by his last outing—a beating at Oakland on Wednesday. Stroman left his last outing due to a blister so there’s that too. Those blisters can do more damage than many realize, including changing one’s grip on the baseball. In any event, Stroman is on our radar for better days ahead but the Jays have nothing but misery against this team and the Rays will send a starter out there that is very high on our radar.

The Tampa Bay Rays have drafted, developed and turned over more quality arms in this league than just about any other team over the years so when they traded Chris Archer to Pittsburgh for Tyler Glasnow (RHP), they knew exactly what they were doing. In his second start with his new team, Glasnow allowed a solo home run on Tuesday, but outside of that, he was nearly untouchable. Over four innings, he allowed two hits, with zero walks and nine strikeouts. Glasnow made his Rays debut against the Angels the week before and was similarly effective. There was a solo homer, but also a bunch of strikes and whiffs over three solid innings. Glasnow is two starts into his Rays career, and he’s made an outstanding first impression.

Glasnow has always been a power pitcher, but he’s never excelled at throwing strikes in the majors. With the Rays, he’s faced 25 batters. He’s walked only one of them while recording 14 strikeouts. The first time out, he threw 71% strikes; the next time out, he threw 69% strikes. After his last start there were 64 pitchers who had thrown at least 100 pitches in August. Glasnow ranked seventh among them in strike rate. He also ranked second among them in zone rate, and he ranked second among them in whiff rate. Glasnow has been hard to hit, but he’s also gotten ahead. That’s something we haven’t seen very much until now and it’s no coincidence that things changed as soon as the Rays pitching development staff got a hold of him.

This kid has pure quality stuff that could even be considered nasty and here’s an example of his fastball:

Here’s a curveball:

Here’s a slider, which is basically the same as the curveball, but with a few extra miles per hour:

There’s something important to remember here. In the majors, pre-Tampa Bay, Glasnow hadn’t thrown many strikes for any real length of time. However, just last season, over a stretch of 13 starts in Triple-A, Glasnow threw two-thirds of his pitches for strikes, with 24 walks and 121 strikeouts in 82.1 innings. Glasnow’s already been amazing at the next-highest level. The Rays just have to coax that out of him in the bigs and they are well on their way to doing just that. The Pirates grew sufficiently frustrated, which is why Glasnow became available in the first place. The Rays saw only opportunity, hoping that a tweaked approach would yield superior outcomes. The long and short of it is that Glasnow has never looked this good in the majors before and the Rays may have made one of the best under the radar trades ever when so many teams were desperately searching for a starter. Put Tyler Glasnow high on your radar and you fantasy players should scoop him up ASAP but before you do that, place a wager on the Rays in this spot first.

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