5th starter: Williams or Glasnow
out six and allowed two hits in four scoreless innings.
“It’s out of my control,” Williams said. “I better go out with a bang if it’s going to be out of my control.”
He struck out 10 in nine scoreless innings in his final two starts of spring. In 17⅔ Grapefruit League innings, he struck out 18 while walking only two and had a 2.04 ERA.
“The last few outings, he’s definitely got some things done,” Hurdle said. “The challenges early, even last year, were quick two strikes and then a challenge to put people away. That seems to have spun in a different direction.”
Williams, 24, will throw a bullpen session Friday in Montreal, where the Pirates will face the Toronto Blue Jays in two exhibition games Friday and Saturday at Olympic Stadium. Glasnow will pitch in relief Saturday. Glasnow’s outings this spring have ranged from dominant (six strikeouts in two innings Feb. 26) to laborious (four walks, five hits and six runs in 2⅓ innings against the Dominican Republic’s World Baseball Classic roster March 8).
The 23-year-old Glasnow made four starts last season in the majors, seven appearances in all. He has fantastic raw stuff but showed deficiency in his command and struggled to control opposing baserunners. In the minors, though, he tore through the Class AAA International League, striking out 10.8 batters per nine innings with a 1.87 ERA. Huntington acknowledged that sometimes, the next step in a player’s development must take place in the majors.
“He’s dominated for a relatively extended period of time,” Huntington said. “Understanding why he dominated, understanding how he dominated, understanding what was different at the major league level, and can we get him somewhere in between that, and ideally back to a point where he dominated Triple-A and get him to a point where he’s executing those pitches up here that will have effect at the major-league level. We’ll continue to weight what went really well, why it went well, and then, is he one of those guys where the next step in the development is at the major-league level?”
The Pirates optioned Hutchison to Indianapolis Wednesday morning. The 26-year-old right-hander allowed 23 runs and 33 hits in 20⅔ spring innings, good for a 10.02 ERA. He pitched well through his first three games but allowed at least six runs in each of his final three. His spring culminated in a nine-run, 10-hit outing against the Red Sox Tuesday that include six first-inning runs and two homers.
“We’ve seen some flashes of the guy we felt like we were getting when we traded for him: The crispness of the fastball, the ability to keep it out of the middle of the plate, the sharpness of the breaking ball and a very effective changeup,” Huntington said.
“Unfortunately, we’ve also seen way too much of the fastball catching too much of the plate and the other pitches not being as sharp.”