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Anthony Solometo thought he was in trouble.

Solometo, a self-described poor driver, accidentally reversed a golf cart into a tree earlier this month. A few days after the crash, Greensboro manager Robbie Hammock called Solometo into his office to make sure the logistics were handled. Hammock did a little prodding, but Solometo assured his manager that the matter had been handled. Before Solometo left, Hammock had one more topic to discuss.

“I opened the door and he was like, ‘Oh yeah, also, you should pack your things because you’re going to Altoona,’” Solometo said. “It caught me off guard because I was nervous. It was an awesome feeling after that. Everyone was looking at me to see what I was going to say and I had no words. I just put my arms up and everyone started going crazy for me.”

Solometo’s performance on the mound has been better than his performance behind the wheel. In 12 starts for High-A Greensboro, Solometo, the Pirates' No. 9 prospect per MLB Pipeline, had a 2.30 ERA and 3.16 FIP with 68 strikeouts across 58 2/3 innings. He hasn’t missed a beat since joining Double- A Altoona, allowing two runs in two starts across 10 innings with 13 strikeouts to two walks.

“We have a lot of faith in his maturity, his routine,” said general manager Ben Cherington. “He's been ahead of his years since the day he signed as far as being on top of the right stuff and knowing what he needs to do to prepare. So, we were confident both in the on-field part and just as a person, as a mature young man that he would be ready and we felt like it was a good time to challenge him.”

Given how Solometo’s season began, a mid-June promotion didn’t initially appear to be in the cards. Solometo had a 3.94 ERA and 4.06 FIP in his first seven starts of the season, but the walks stuck out. Across 29 2/3 innings, Solometo had walked 21 batters, or 6.37 per nine innings. On May 12, Solometo walked six batters across 4 2/3 innings, the most he’s walked in a single game in his professional career.

“I felt embarrassed for myself,” Solometo said. “I remember going out to eat with my girlfriend after the game and being like, ‘I don’t even know what happened.’ I feel like I could’ve stayed in there and battled my way through the whole game if I needed to. Six walks is so unlike me. I pride myself with my control. … For me to go out there having a six-walk outing, I know that’s not the pitcher I am and I hold myself to a higher standard than that.”

Solometo’s erratic performance prompted a text from a certain former first-overall pick.

“Henry [Davis] texted me like, ‘What are you doing, man?’” Solometo recalled.

Davis, who knows what’s needed to earn a promotion, presented Solometo with a challenge: if Solometo allowed two runs or fewer and two walks or fewer in five consecutive starts, then the lefty would be with Altoona in no time. Immediately following that six-walk performance, Solometo began the best five-start run of his professional career.

In Solometo’s subsequent five starts, he allowed just two runs and four walks across 29 innings. (0.62 ERA). In the fourth inning of his start on May 18 against the Asheville Tourists, Solometo allowed two runs. From there, he proceeded to string together 25 consecutive scoreless innings. As Davis predicted, Solometo found himself in Altoona shortly after.

More than Davis’s words, Solometo made a key mechanical alteration that’s paved the way for his recent success.

To begin the season, Solometo had a habit of hopping off the mound when he delivered a pitch instead of keeping his back foot on the ground. That caused Solometo’s backhand to “leak open” and go over his front knee, causing him to be more off-balance and throw from a more sidearm, resulting in diminished control and power.

“I would literally leap,” Solometo said. “I’d be airborne off both feet.”

To land Air Solometo, the lefty shortened his stride and focused on his hinge at the hips, working on staying low as opposed to jumping. That tweak has allowed Solometo to be more direct to the plate and have more consistency in his delivery.

Along with the tweaked mechanics, Solometo has also had an uptick in velocity. Last season, Solometo sat in the upper-80s and low-90s. This season, by contrast, Solometo sits in the low-to-mid-90s. He’s hit 96 mph several times. On one occasion, he touched 97 mph.

Solometo’s velocity increase derived from a familiar source: Tread Athletics, the facility that helped Mitch Keller re-discover his velocity.

When Solometo arrived at Tread this offseason, he was curious as to why he was already sore. Devin Hayes, a performance coordinator at Tread, needed just three seconds to diagnose the issue.

“The arm was dragging,” Hayes said. “It was late. That’s our way to put it; the arm’s late timing-wise. With the angle of his elbow -- usually called elbow flexion angle -- instead of being at 90 degrees, it was at like 120. That was a basic eye test. We didn’t have a biomechanics lab or anything. We look at 90 degrees as the marker, so it was like, ‘Let’s get you back closer to 90 and let’s see how you feel there.’”

There was also the matter of physical shape and nutrition. With a combination of more intense lifting at Tread and at his home gym and proper nutrition, Solometo dropped from 220 to 207 pounds, allowing him to be more explosive.

“There’s a lot of things you have to sacrifice, little things you don’t even recognize,” Solometo said. “It’s really easy to be like, ‘I want some cookies today.’ I’m not going to lie, I give in to them most of the time. But saying no more often than yes is what matters and trying to keep putting yourself in the right position when it comes to sleep, when it comes to nutrition — all this stuff. It’s just being consistent. Consistency is the hardest thing on the planet. Once you master that, things start getting a little bit easier. I’m still trying to do that right now.”