In a long baseball season, it can be difficult to determine when a thing has become "A Thing." That’s why we have the Freak-Out Factor -- a scale from one (stay serene) to 10 (get your freak on) -- to help fans properly react to whatever malady, misfortune or malediction is currently being faced by their favorite club.

Here are the latest calculations from the panic processor.

Tyler Glasnow is out at least a month!

For the entirety of this season, the only Freak-Out Factor associated with Glasnow was the full 10 experienced by Pirates fans over the Chris Archer trade. But watching Glasnow, who was the American League Pitcher of the Month in April, walk off the field -- during a divisional tilt against the Yankees, no less -- Friday night was the worst sight of the baseball weekend.

Thankfully, Glasnow’s injury has been diagnosed as a mild forearm strain, not something more sinister. As Glasnow himself said, missing four to six weeks is a heck of a lot better than missing 16 months due to Tommy John surgery. And the Rays lead the league in creativity.

But setbacks are always possible with an injury like this, and replacing Glasnow will be especially difficult when Tampa Bay begins a stretch of 34 games in 34 days (and 47 in 48) on May 21. The injury also comes at a time when the Yankees are getting healthier and the Red Sox have gotten hot.

FOF: 7, or Glasnow’s season-opening streak of starts allowing two runs or fewer.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. is hitting .191!

Guerrero’s double Sunday was his first extra-base hit since his first hit in his April 26 debut. Could it be that maybe, possibly, the Blue Jays’ decision not to call up Guerrero last September was not the crime against humanity that it was billed to be by some? Hitting in the big leagues is hard, no matter your last name or how sweet your swing is.

Thirteen games into his career, the hype seems to have affected Guerrero. No, that’s not a comment on how he’s approached his arrival. It’s a comment on how opposing pitchers have approached him. They knew from day one not to give the kid anything to hit and it’s led to, as of entering play Sunday, Guerrero getting the lowest percentage of pitches in the zone of any player in the Majors with at least 40 plate appearances this season.

So this is not your ordinary adjustment. Long-term, I admit to having some mild concerns about Guerrero’s body (that he got pulled for a pinch-runner immediately after his first hit was telling). But a slump out of the chute is no big deal.

FOF: 0.656, or Guerrero Sr.’s OPS through his first 13 games. He turned out OK in his career.

The Nationals are 7 1/2 games back of the Phillies!

Washington just wrapped a tricky trip in which it went a combined 3-7 against the Phillies, Brewers and Dodgers. The good news is that the Nats got their Nos. 3 and 4 hitters -- Anthony Rendon and Juan Soto -- back in action during that trip. The injury bug bit the lineup hard in the season’s first six weeks, and that helps explain the sub-.500 start.

But injuries don’t completely explain it. The bigger issues are a bullpen with the worst relief ERA in baseball, and a defense that by Defensive Runs Saved, per Fangraphs (-28), is the worst in the National League. Neither of those issues will be easily solved. The Nats have already dismissed pitching coach Derek Lilliquist, and the threat of yet another managerial shakeup is very real here. But one factor taming down the Freak-Out Factor is an NL East in which it currently does not appear any team is going to run away and hide. Fangraphs still calculates the Nats’ odds of winning the East to be the second best in the division. Let’s see how much renewed health helps in the next week or two before upping the angst ante.

FOF: 8, or how many games started by Max Scherzer that the Nats have lost this season (seven) plus their number of hits off Hyun-Jin Ryu on Sunday (one).

Bryce Harper is slumping!

The Harper honeymoon lasted all of 10 days. In that span, he unveiled those ugly-but-endearing Phillie Phanatic cleats, hit a 465-foot blast for his first homer in red pinstripes and even announced that he was going to become a father to a future cheesesteak lover.

But going back to April 10, Harper is 21-for-107, with just 10 extra-base hits. He’s heard some boos from the fans and was even criticized by teammate Jake Arrieta for getting ejected from a game. The honeymoon’s over.

Periods like this are an inevitable product of the Harper experience. He’s a streaky hitter, and, as we saw last season -- when Harper had a similarly splendid start undone by a period from April 9 to June 20 in which he hit just .191 -- it can take him a while to dig out of a rut. His average exit velocity (91.1 mph) and barrel percentage (12.6) to begin the season are both better than 2018, and he did hit a grand slam last week.

That said, Harper saw his whiff (31.6) and strikeout percentages (24.3) rise to career high levels last year, and both numbers are up again so far (34.6 and 29.2, respectively). So you can’t totally shrug this off as Bryce-ness as usual.

FOF: 4, or where Harper wound up ranking among full-time 2018 outfielders in OPS despite that prolonged slump.

The Indians are four games back of the Twins!

At the start of the season, the Indians were projected by Fangraphs to have an 88.6% chance of winning the AL Central. Those odds are now down to just 31.9% as of Sunday. There was reason to worry about the club’s offense before Corey Kluber (broken right forearm) and Mike Clevinger (upper back strain) got hurt.

Now it’s a darn-near-full-blown freak-out, because even with Clevinger making good progress (he’s eligible to be activated June 7), the Indians don’t have the pitching prowess to overcome an offense averaging 3.53 runs per game (28th in MLB).

Though a walk-off homer last week was an encouraging sign, Jose Ramirez has been inhabited by the ghost of Alvaro Espinoza for more than half a season’s worth of games at this point. Carlos Santana is the only regular on the club north of league-average output, and he’s slumped in the month of May.

Perhaps the biggest issue of all is that the Twins are far better positioned, in terms of finances and prospects, to make an impact midseason move.

FOF: 9, or how many games the Indians have lost when scoring one or zero runs (only the Blue Jays and Marlins have more).

Joey Votto is hitting .206!

By his unusually high standards, Joey Votto’s 2018 season (.284/.417/.419 slash) was a “bad year.”

“You can’t have two [bad years],” Votto told me this spring, “or else that’s who you are.”

Is this who Votto is? He’s regressed again so far in 2019, with a .206/.325/.338 slash line through 38 games. He’s hit just 15 homers going back to the start of 2018 (there were 127 players who hit more than that last year alone). He’s 35 years old, and his whiff percentage is the highest it’s been in four years. Votto has had slow starts in the past, but even those of us who bought lifetime subscriptions to the Joey Votto Fan Club, for whom hope dies last, are getting nervous.

FOF: 7.6, or how much higher Votto’s whiff percentage is this year (23.0) vs. his MVP-caliber 2017 (15.4).