Jameson Taillon to start Monday, Tyler Glasnow demoted

Catching up on some pretty big items from earlier today: Jameson Taillon is scheduled to start for the Pirates on Monday night, five weeks after undergoing surgery for testicular cancer. Making room in the rotation, Tyler Glasnow was among those demoted in a group of roster moves made Saturday.

Good news first: It’s awesome to see Taillon healthy, first of all, and also back in the majors so soon. He caught a pretty scary disease in time, and hopefully that’s an inspiration to many.

The bad: Glasnow has had four straight trying starts. He’s gone from a thrower rendered ineffective by wildness to a guy that’s around the strike zone perhaps too much, with opposing hitters way too comfortable against his 96 MPH stuff.

Is there a way to meld those two things into an effective approach with work in Indianapolis? Probably, but Glasnow is also a guy whose problems were often masked against minor-league hitters. An ultra-specialized approach has to be in order.

Also going down to triple-a before Saturday’s game was reliever Dovydas Neverauskas. The Pirates designated for assignment Indianapolis reliever Pat Light to make room on the 40-man roster for Edgar Santana.

Chad Kuhl, originally slated to start Monday, had his spot pushed to Wednesday.