A very big deal: How Tyler Glasnow marries strength and agility
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Tim Kurkjian, ESPN Senior Writer
DODGERS PITCHER Tyler Glasnow, who stands 6-foot-8, 225 pounds, can do a standing backflip.
“It’s no big deal, really,” he said. (Yes, it is. There aren’t many people that big and tall who can do a backflip.)
“Oh, I’m sure there are a lot of people bigger than me that can,” he said. (No, there aren’t.)
Glasnow, 30, is a new member of the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ rotation, acquired from the Tampa Bay Rays in a trade in December and immediately signed to a five-year, $136 million extension. His stuff is as overpowering and violent as anyone’s in the game, in part because of his remarkable athleticism: a breathtaking combination of size, speed, strength, agility, mobility and balance, all of which has drawn comparisons to Michael Jordan, Michael Phelps — and a giraffe.
“He is the most physically gifted athlete I have ever seen in my life,” said Rays closer Pete Fairbanks, an ex-teammate. “He is more flexible than anyone I’ve ever seen. His movements are cleaner than anyone I’ve ever seen. He is unbelievable. I don’t think there is athletic activity that he can’t do.”
Besides a backflip, Glasnow can walk on his hands. He won a silver medal in the Junior Olympics in the high jump. He was an excellent basketball player (“I’m tall,” he said). He loved roller hockey and was a wizard on a skateboard. He ran track, did the shot put and played football for one year in high school. He lifted a huge amount of weight, and says, “if I’m on the side of a squat rack, I can go parallel to the ground, but I don’t know if that is unusual.”
It is.
“We call that a flagpole,” said Dodgers pitcher J.P. Feyereisen. “He was doing that in the weight room today. I’m not sure how many guys could do that. He’s 6-8, and he can do it.”
Yet with this amazing array of skills and athleticism, Glasnow hasn’t been able to stay healthy. He has never completed a game in his major league career; he has never pitched enough innings in a season (162) to qualify for the ERA title. He had Tommy John surgery in 2021, an injury he said had affected him for even longer.
But he has averaged 11.5 strikeouts per nine innings and only 7.3 hits. His stuff is hellacious. His curveball is one of the best in the game; it’s unhittable when paired with his 98 mph fastball. Beginning Wednesday, when Glasnow takes the mound in Seoul, South Korea, for the Dodgers’ Opening Day game against the San Diego Padres, the Dodgers are hoping to harness that athletic ability and spectacular stuff.
“I feel amazing now,” he said. “I figured out the elbow thing. I’ve had that since 2019. Now that that’s ironed out. I feel the healthiest I’ve ever felt. Now after meeting all the coaches and the training staff [with the Dodgers], I’m really excited about the future. Everything is so buttoned-up here, I will be able to put my body in the best position to succeed.”
“When it comes to ability, no one is better than Tyler,” former teammate Brad Miller said. “I think his relationship with the Dodgers is a match made in heaven. That $130 million extension is going to be like pennies on the dollar for what he will do for the Dodgers.”
THE ART OF pitching has changed dramatically in the past 10 years, as athletic trainers and performance experts have found new ways to improve body function with all-new exercises — and yet it all feels familiar to Glasnow.
“I look at videos doing gymnastics when I was 5, and the fundamentals and warmups I was doing then are what baseball players are being taught today,” Glasnow said. “It’s crazy. Walking on your hands, the high jump, backbends. I already have a baseline for all this.”
“Whatever he did as a kid from ages 5 to 12, I need to write it down and have my son do it, because that’s how you build an athlete,” Fairbanks said. “He’s the perfect blend of genetics.”
Glasnow’s mom, Donna, is 5-9, a retired gymnast who now coaches gymnastics at Cal State Northridge; his dad, Greg, 6-2, is a swimmer and a water polo player.
“She chose to be a gymnast, but if she had chosen another sport, she probably would have been great at it,” Glasnow said of his mom. “She’s almost 70 years old. But she’s in insanely good shape. I remember growing up, she was always doing handstands and cartwheels around the house, all this crazy stuff. She put us [Glasnow and his brother, Ted] in gymnastics when we were little. She was always trying to get us to do as many athletic things as possible. I look at the gymnastics things we did as kids. It was insane. It was like, ‘Whoa, we were 5!'”
Ted was a decathlete at Notre Dame.
“He is 6-1, 6-2, he is ginormously strong,” Glasnow said. “He is the most shredded human in our family. When he was competing, it was insane how big he was. I got the height. He got the strength. I could lift a lot of weight, I was obsessed by it, but he was stronger.”
Said Yarbrough: “I asked Tyler once what he would have done if he hadn’t been a baseball player. He said nonchalantly, ‘Well, my brother does the decathlon. I guess I’d do that.'”
As a kid, Glasnow loved being on the trampoline, doing flips, which taught him the sensation of being in space while still maintaining control of his body. That led to his first backflip.
“I was 19 years old, I was at the ocean in Mexico,” he said. “I had never thought about doing a backflip in gymnastics. But I was there, on the sand, and I thought, ‘I think I can do this.’ So I did it in the sand. I just thought to myself, ‘Well, I guess I can do a backflip.'”
Dodgers pitcher Ryan Yarbrough has seen it.
“He just said to me, ‘Do you want to see it?'” Yarbrough said. “And he just did it on a dime.”
“I call him the Giraffe,” said Texas Rangers first baseman Nathaniel Lowe, a former teammate in Tampa. “Giraffes have long limbs, long levers, but can really move. People think giraffes are bumbling animals, but they can run. When I was with the Rays, Tyler used to beg to pinch run if we were in a long game. He’d say, ‘Please let me run. I promise I can score from first on a double. My sprint speed would measure really high on Statcast!'”
“Everyone talks about how [5-10 Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu] Yamamoto can contort his body and bend his back all the way,” said Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers president of baseball operations. “But Tyler can do that even better.”
Glasnow knows his body well, what it can do.
“The biggest difference with the athleticism is [considering] my height, how I’m able to get down the mound differently than most,” Glasnow said. “And because I do a lot of the mobility stuff, I think I can stay stable in places where some people would find it harder to balance. I think I have good single-leg stability. I am pretty explosive. I can push off hard, and … I can get the ball out a lot harder than most people. It’s all about stability, where you are in space, finding yourself, kind of like eyes-closed balance. When pitching, I get so extended in my back, like the high jump. My mom would always have us doing handstand walks, single-arm stability stuff. Doing all that at such young age, it has helped my body and my brain on the mound.”
GLASNOW’S HEIGHT CAME from his mother’s side; she has a brother who is 6-9. In Glasnow’s case, it happened suddenly. He was 5-8 as a high school freshman in Santa Clarita, California.
“Then my junior year, over a winter break, in like five weeks, I grew like four inches,” he said. “When I got back to school at winter break, people were like, ‘What the hell happened to you?’ Crazy. I remember leaving and coming back and people were like ‘What!?'”
Glasnow graduated high school at 6-6, meaning he grew almost a foot in only four years. Normally, when someone grows that quickly, it is difficult for the body to catch up, to remain coordinated. Not Glasnow. The increased size only added to his pitching acumen.
“I’ve always been really athletic,” he said. “I was always comfortable picking up any new sport. As far as baseball specifics go, having athletic parents, growing up in the place that I grew up, it’s such a great baseball culture there. Santa Clarita was all about baseball. I played all year round, And I had some really good coaches. Baseball was always my best sport.”
His idol was Randy Johnson, who was 6-10, “and he had trouble throwing strikes, too,” said Glasnow, who struggled with his own command. “But I never really nerded out on baseball too much when I was a kid. I was such a rambunctious human, I couldn’t just sit and watch a baseball game.”
Even then, though, his stuff was elite. He was drafted in 2011 by the Pittsburgh Pirates and spent several years after his 2016 debut yo-yoing between the majors and Triple-A and the bullpen and the rotation. After being traded to the Rays midseason in 2018, he became a full-time starter until he had Tommy John surgery in August 2021.
“The first time I saw him throw in person [in 2018], he was in an empty stadium, in the bullpen just getting some work in, no one in the box, and he was casually throwing 97-98 mph, the ball was just exploding, and the look on his face was, ‘I can’t help it,'” said Adam Kolarek, an ex-teammate in Tampa. “It looked like Michael Jordan shrugging his shoulders [after making another 3-pointer] as if to say, ‘I don’t know how I do it.’ It’s not cocky. Tyler just can’t help it.”
“I faced him last spring in a simulated game,” said former Rays teammate Brandon Lowe. “I swung at a curveball that bounced before the plate. I thought it was a fastball. That has never happened to me before. It is almost impossible to mistake a fastball for a curveball.”
“He is a beast,” Miller said. “He is so long, but he is not lanky. [Jacob] deGrom has these amazing levers in his body. Tyler has the same ones, and he’s 40 pounds bigger. The dude just hands the ball to the catcher.”
So, is there anything Glasnow can’t do?
“I suck at golf,” he said. “Awful. Terrible. I chunk it. I have the all-or-nothing mentality. I hit it really far, but it slices farther than it goes straight. I’ll lose like 15 balls in a round. I suck.”
Finally, we found the one thing Tyler Glasnow can’t do.
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Dave Wilson
ATLANTA, Ga. — Despite a 28-7 loss to No. 3 Georgia in the SEC championship game Saturday, Alabama coach Kalen DeBoer said the No. 9 Crimson Tide are deserving of a spot in the College Football Playoff, saying a conference title game loss shouldn’t be punishment.
“If this game applies to and takes away from our resume, I don’t think that’s right,” DeBoer said. “I really don’t. I think the precedent’s been set and I don’t know how you can go into a conference playoff game when you’re the No. 1 seed and did all these things throughout the year — and playing in this game against one of the top teams in the country as well — how that can hurt you and keep you out of the playoff when again, we’ve done what we’ve done all year.”
The Tide opened the season with a 31-17 loss on the road to Florida State, then won eight straight, including victories over Georgia, Vanderbilt, Missouri and Tennessee. Despite a 23-21 loss to then-No. 11 Oklahoma at home on Nov. 15, the Tide qualified for a rematch with Georgia in Atlanta.
The Bulldogs held Alabama to 16 carries for -3 yards rushing, just the second time in school history the Tide have been held to negative yards rushing, after the 1968 Gator Bowl. They became the first team not to rush for a first down in an SEC championship game, according to ESPN Research. Their longest carry of the night was 5 yards.
Still, Alabama remained in striking distance until 8:13 remained, when, trailing 21-7, DeBoer opted to go for it on fourth-and-2 from the Tide’s own 12. Quarterback Ty Simpson threw the ball toward the sideline for Germie Bernard, but it sailed high and wide and out of bounds. Three plays later, Georgia quarterback Gunner Stockton threw a 13-yard touchdown pass to Zachariah Branch to stretch the lead to 28-7.
“If we’re really worried about the score, then you probably punt it on your own 11,” DeBoer said. “I’m here to win an SEC championship. If you lose by one or you lose by more, it’s still a loss. And that’s what I was caring about. We’re here to win an SEC championship. We can’t get worried about how much we lose by.”
DeBoer said Alabama was missing a few key pieces that would have helped against Georgia, all of whom would return before a playoff game, including running back Jam Miller.
“Two of our three losses are when Jam doesn’t play,” he said.
In the first quarter, Georgia’s Cole Speer blocked Blake Doud‘s punt and it was recovered and returned by Justin Williams to the Alabama 21. Four plays later, Stockton threw his first touchdown pass to Roderick Robinson II to give the Bulldogs a 7-0 lead. DeBoer said the block came from the spot usually manned by defensive lineman LT Overton, who was out for this game.
“There’s a check we’ve got to make we make all season long,” DeBoer said. “We missed it and they got an extra hat that we couldn’t block.”
DeBoer said that was the story of the game, that the Tide gave the Bulldogs four short fields and had to hold up against them. But he touted Alabama’s resilience, the same way he said the team bounced back all season.
“If you’re really looking at this game, I mean it was a 14-point game with 7½ minutes to go and we had the ball,” DeBoer said. “I don’t want to take anything away from what Georgia did.”
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey told ESPN that a loss to Georgia in this game should not be a negative in the eyes of the CFP selection committee.
“That may be the best team in the country right now,” Sankey said of Georgia. “And you’ve got to remember, Alabama went to Athens, won a game, won a number of other ranked games, played tough schedule. This is a reward tonight. It’s not a penalty for playing in that game.”
He said that if it does cost Alabama a CFP spot, he’s sure it will raise questions about the future of championship games in a significant way.
“But that question’s been there for decades and George and Alabama played here a couple of years ago, and Alabama beat an undefeated Georgia team in the four-team playoff [in 2018],” Sankey said. “We still kept the championship game.”
Simpson finished 19-of-39 for 212 yards and one touchdown and one interception, his first start in which he completed less than 50% of his throws. He was pressured all night and said the Georgia defense had a good plan. He also said that, regardless of the loss, his team’s resume holds up to scrutiny.
“We went through a gauntlet of the schedule,” Simpson said. “The SEC is the best conference in the country. That’s a really good team, and it’s pretty much as simple as that.”
ESPN’s Mark Schlabach contributed to this report.
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Mark Schlabach
ATLANTA — Georgia coach Kirby Smart doesn’t have an Alabama problem anymore.
After Smart’s teams dropped seven of their previous eight games against the Crimson Tide, the No. 3 Bulldogs flipped the script with a dominant 28-7 victory over No. 9 Alabama in Saturday’s SEC championship game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium.
By securing their second straight SEC title, the Bulldogs finished 12-1 and likely secured a top-four seed and first-round bye in the upcoming College Football Playoff.
It’s the first time Georgia has won back-to-back SEC championships since tailback Herschel Walker led them to three straight from 1980-82.
The fact the latest one came against Alabama, where Smart worked as an assistant under former coach Nick Saban from 2007 to 2015, made it all that much sweeter. It was Georgia’s most lopsided win against the Tide since a 21-0 victory on Oct. 2, 1976.
“It’s not about redemption; they’ve got a great program, great head coach,” Smart said. “It’s about our team tonight. These guys have been doubted and since that last game — our team was really physical tonight. Played an excellent game. Really proud of them and proud for these Georgia fans.”
In Alabama’s 24-21 victory on Sept. 27, which ended Georgia’s 33-game home winning streak, the Bulldogs trailed 14-0 early and never took the lead.
That wasn’t the case Saturday, as walk-on receiver Cole Speer delivered the first big play, blocking Alabama’s punt from its 21 with 6:31 left in the first quarter. That set up Gunner Stockton’s one-yard touchdown pass to running back Roderick Robinson II for an early 7-0 lead.
The Bulldogs were only getting started.
On the Tide’s next possession, safety KJ Bolden tipped Ty Simpson’s pass, which cornerback Daylen Everette intercepted. Georgia put together a 14-play drive that culminated with Stockton’s 5-yard scoring pass to Dillon Bell to make it 14-0.
Georgia’s defense, which couldn’t get off the field in the teams’ first meeting this season, held the Crimson Tide to minus-3 rushing on 16 attempts. Alabama’s longest run was five yards.
It was only the second time in school history that Alabama was held to negative rushing yards in a game (it had minus-45 in a 35-10 loss to Missouri in the 1968 Gator Bowl).
“I think that helped a lot,” Everette said. “We just tried to make it one-dimensional. That’s one thing we emphasized coming into this season: we’ve got to do better stopping the run on defense.”
Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson, who threw for 276 yards with three touchdowns in the earlier meeting, wasn’t nearly as good this time. He completed 19 of 39 passes for 212 yards with one touchdown and one interception. He was sacked three times.
Going back to the second half of the September game, Georgia’s defense shut out the Tide in seven straight quarters.
Alabama didn’t find the end zone Saturday until Simpson’s 23-yard touchdown to Germie Bernard with 12:33 left in the fourth quarter.
The Crimson Tide converted only 3 of 13 third downs, after going 13-for-19 in the earlier win at Georgia.
“We told them after that [September] game there wasn’t a lack of execution in that game at home,” Smart said. “They outplayed us. They out-executed us. They probably out-coached us. We weren’t going to let that happen again in terms of the way we played.”
Georgia has allowed 10 points or fewer in each of its past four games, the longest streak in a single season since the Bulldogs did it in eight straight games in 1971, according to ESPN Research.
“It was a huge difference,” Smart said. “It was the domination on that side of the ball. A lot of it came with a chip on their shoulder from the last one. It came with a chip on their shoulder from improving.”
Stockton was named the game’s MVP after completing 20 of 26 passes for 156 yards with three touchdowns. He was 8-for-10 for 61 yards with all three scores on third down.
“It’s a great feeling to see him get that,” Everette said of Stockton. “Proud of him for everything he’s done this year. Probably one of the toughest kids on the team. Toughest kid I know. Take all the hits, pop right back up.”
As the SEC’s highest-ranked team, Georgia won’t play again until a CFP quarterfinal at the Allstate Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day (8 p.m. ET, ABC). The Bulldogs won’t learn their place in the 12-team bracket until it’s announced Sunday.
Georgia will be looking for revenge in New Orleans, as well. The Bulldogs fell to Notre Dame 23-10 in a CFP quarterfinal following the 2024 season. That was Stockton’s first start for the Bulldogs after Carson Beck was injured in the SEC championship game.
“We never quit,” Stockton said. “I think we’ve shown that in every game. I think that’s one of the best parts about our team, is we never quit.”
We’re just hours from the announcement of the College Football Playoff field. There’s plenty of drama left to play out on the field.
The committee is gathered at its headquarters in the Gaylord Texan Resort in Grapevine, Texas, to watch conference championship games that will impact their final ranking on Selection Day. It was only the beginning of conference championship weekend, but how these games unfolded with the committee watching will determine their five highest-ranked conference champions — and how that order will impact the contenders around them.
We’re tracking all the conference title games and the impact on the CFP field as well as the top plays and highlights from No. 1 Ohio State vs. No. 2 Indiana.
Jump to: CFP takeaways
Conference title takeaways
With the win against Alabama, Georgia should lock up a top-four seed and a first-round bye, but that position depends in part on how far the loser of the Big Ten championship game falls. It’s possible Ohio State and Indiana just flip — or stay status quo — but if it’s a lopsided defeat, Georgia can finish anywhere from No. 2 to No. 4.
The bigger question is how far Alabama drops following its decisive third loss. If Alabama sinks to No. 11, it will open the door for both Notre Dame and Miami to finish in the top 10 — regardless of order. Because of how Alabama lost — and the committee hasn’t forgotten their season-opening loss to Florida State — the Crimson Tide could fall out of the field. The committee also will consider that Alabama has a regular-season road win against the SEC champs, though. If Alabama drops only one spot, it could still be a buffer between Miami and Notre Dame — and it could be the last at-large team in at No. 10.
Texas Tech’s win against BYU secured a top-four finish and a first-round bye for the Red Raiders. It also helped Notre Dame’s playoff chances tremendously, as the Irish no longer have to be concerned about being leapfrogged by BYU.
This puzzle is far from complete, though.
It doesn’t matter for BYU if the committee keeps it at No. 11 or drops it to No. 12 (or beyond). Either way BYU would be bumped out during the seeding process to include a conference champion. Where BYU lands, though, will impact Miami.
The selection committee is most likely to do one of two things: drop No. 11 BYU to No. 12 behind Miami, or keep it exactly where it is. If BYU falls below the Canes, the committee could reconsider the tiebreaker between Miami and Notre Dame.
With Tulane’s win against North Texas on Friday, the American champs locked up a spot in the playoff, as they will be the committee’s fourth-highest-ranked conference champion. The Green Wave will earn the No. 11 or No. 12 seed, depending on who wins the ACC championship game. If Tulane gets the No. 11 seed and faces the committee’s No. 6 team on the road in the first round, as things stand now, Tulane will get a rematch against Ole Miss. The Rebels beat Tulane 45-10 on Sept. 20 in Oxford, and they will have home-field advantage again as the higher seed.
With Friday’s win against Troy, JMU‘s path to the playoff is straightforward: Duke needs to beat Virginia and win the ACC. If that happens, the committee will reward JMU with the No. 12 seed as its fifth and final conference champion — and it would come at the expense of the ACC champion, which would be excluded. The question is if the conference will be excluded entirely, though — or if No. 12 Miami will still sneak in, even without playing this weekend. That could happen if BYU loses to Texas Tech in the Big 12 title game and drops behind Miami — putting the Canes right below No. 10 Notre Dame. In that scenario, the committee could look at Miami’s season-opening win against the Irish as one of several tiebreakers it uses to separate comparable teams.
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