Dodgers’ Tyler Glasnow has appetite for success, including Cy Young bid

PHOENIX — If only Tyler Glasnow had my appetite.

You can’t have it all, and Glasnow already has plenty: a defined 6-foot-8 frame, movie-star looks and a high-90s fastball.

The one area in which he’s no match for 5-8, 220-pound Dylan Hernandez is the ability to put on weight. The Dodgers believe the absence of fat in his body is related to how injury-prone he is, which is why they have assigned him a task that my sportswriting colleagues and I would easily ace: To eat, eat and eat some more.

“I lose weight really fast,” Glasnow said. “If I don’t stay on top of it and I don’t weigh myself for like a week, I’ll lose, like, 7 pounds. It’s crazy.”

To reach his ideal playing weight, Teoscar Hernandez dropped a dozen pounds over the winter by controlling his food portions. Most of the Dodgers who gained weight in the offseason, such as Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Gavin Stone, gained muscle mass.

Glasnow’s objective was to become fatter.

The organization’s calls for him to do so started last year when he was placed on the injured list in late April with shoulder inflammation. 

“They were, like, ‘If you add some more fat, it kind of binds into your tissue a little bit better,’” Glasnow said. “I tried it, and I felt a lot better.”

He now walks around at 240-plus pounds, up from his traditional playing weight in the 220s. By one measure, his body fat has increased from 5% to more than 9%.

“I feel good at (a lower) weight,” Glasnow said. “I just think it’s hard to go through a full season like that. It’s good to have some weight to play with.”

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That doesn’t mean the health-conscious Glasnow has suddenly started racking up reward points on the McDonald’s App. 

“I usually try to eat a lot of protein, carbs and vegetables,” he said.

He’s not eating worse. He’s just eating more often.

“I used to love to just eat when I got to the field,” he said. “I would fast, basically. I’d eat at night and then not eat again until I got (back) to the field. Now, I’m just eating, like, breakfast and a late-night meal. So it’s like four meals a day.”

Glasnow has never pitched more than 134 innings in a season — he pitched 90 ⅓ last year — and he’s hopeful that his new body will help him remain healthy for the entire year.

Health problems have kept him from contending for major awards. He has posted a 3.17 ERA over the last seven seasons. If he can avoid the IL this year, a Cy Young Award is within the realm of possibilities for him. Glasnow admitted he’s thought about it.

“I think every single starting pitcher is thinking about that,” he said. “You gotta take it start to start, and you don’t want to think about it all season long, but, like, of course, yeah.”

Manager Dave Roberts was encouraged to hear that.

“I think as he’s kind of taken another step, (and) with the talent that he has, he should be in the conversation —  and I would expect him to say the same thing — with the best pitchers in the National League,” Roberts said.

Roberts raved about the fortitude Glasnow displayed in the postseason. The Dodgers won each of his three postseason starts, as the right-hander registered a 1.65 ERA in those games. He also made three relief appearances, including two in the World Series. He pitched 2 ⅓ innings in Game 7.

“I thought Tyler grew as much as anyone last year,” Roberts said. “The biggest thing for me is he did something he’s never done —  that is, pitch out of the bullpen. For him to expose himself to failure by doing something he’s never done in that environment speaks a lot of maturity. So for him to put himself out there and do what he did and perform at that level, I think that’s a springboard into the ensuing years, specifically this season.”

Glasnow’s previous playoff experience was spotty at best, as his ERA was 5.72 in the 10 postseason starts he made with the Rays. An elbow injury kept him from pitching in his first postseason with the Dodgers, in 2024.

He thinks he was in the right place in his career when he scaled the mound for the Dodgers last October, an established major leaguer in the second year of a five-year, $136.5 million contract.

“I think you get to a certain point where it’s just only about winning,” he said. “Your individual stats definitely do become a lot less important.”

He scaled the mound with an entirely new mindset.

“I think maybe when I was younger, the postseason, it was a lot more nerve-racking,” Glasnow said. “I think if anything, the postseason (last year), I wasn’t nervous. I was much more excited and hungry to pitch.”

And because he is hungry to pitch again in the postseason, he has worked on developing a hunger for food. The extra meals, he hopes, will translate to extra starts this season.

Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: nypost.com