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For the second time this season, the Pirates are dipping into their prospect stash to bring up a high-upside pitcher. This time around, it's Tyler Glasnow, a 6-foot-8 right-hander who was ranked as the 14th-best prospect in all of baseball before the season by Baseball America.

Among pitchers, Glasnow was only ranked below Julio Urias (Dodgers), Lucas Giolito (Nationals), Alex Reyes (Cardinals), Blake Snell (Rays) and Steven Matz (Mets). That means after Glasnow's start on Thursday, we'll have seen everyone on that list in the majors but Reyes.

Tyler Glasnow is the latest prospect to get the call. USATSI

Here are four more things to know about Glasnow's promotion:

1. He can utterly dominate hitters.

In Triple-A this season, Glasnow has a 1.78 ERA and only 57 hits allowed in 96 innings pitched. Opposing hitters have hit .176 with a brutal .265 slugging percentage. In three of his last seven outings, he's actually allowed zero hits. Seriously. It's just domination to the point that you wonder if he'll allow a hit in any given outing.

At his height and with a high-velocity fastball, Glasnow makes for a very imposing presence on the hill.

So why hasn't he been brought up until now?

2. Command, control and efficiency are problems.

Those three outings where he allowed zero hits? He combined for 15 walks in 18 innings. In his 96 innings this season, he's walked 52 batters. In his minor-league career, he's walked 4.4 batters per every nine innings. For a point of reference, the NL average this season is 3.2 BB/9.

Thanks to this problem, in addition to his penchant for racking up the strikeouts, Glasnow has the capability to rack up huge pitch counts early in the game. At times in the minors, he's found himself over 90 pitches before the end of the fifth inning.

Given that these issues have come against minor-leaguers and now he's going to the majors, there's a real chance it's a bigger problem. In that case, it would tax the Pirates bullpen during his starts.

3. He's coming up partially because of more injury woes.

Jon Niese is being pushed all the way back to Sunday to make room for Glasnow.

Starters Gerrit Cole, Ryan Vogelsong and Jameson Taillon (the previous top prospect called up) are already on the disabled list, and Niese has a knee injury. As such, Chad Kuhl and Glasnow join Francisco Liriano, Jeff Locke and Niese in the rotation.

4. Still, the Pirates are hot.

After dropping all the way to five games under .500 at 34-39 on June 23, the Pirates have righted the ship. Heading into Wednesday night's game with the Cardinals, they've won six straight and nine of their last 11. They entered Wednesday only 2 1/2 games out of the second NL wild card.

Glasnow will square off against Adam Wainwright and the Cardinals on Thursday in hopes of keeping things moving in a positive direction for a team that has made the playoffs in three straight years.