Bryan Abreu

Primarily relying on his breaking balls in 2019, Abreu’s fastball was used just 32.2% of the time, mostly early in counts to set up the breakers. Featuring good velocity (95.1 mph) and average rise and run, it was not a significant whiff pitch for him, generating a 4.3% SwStr and failing to generate any strikeouts despite being employed 12 times with 2 strikes.

Abreu’s slider shows excellent depth and sweep, so much so that it is combined with his curve in some outlets. Per Statcast, 9 of his 13 strikeouts came via the slider even though it only got 17 2-strike opportunities and it registered and excellent 35.5% Contact overall, giving it tentative Money Pitch status in Abreu’s limited body of work.

Abreu went to the curve 24.7% of the time in 2019 and it was effective in his small sample of work, holding opponents to a .086 wOBA. It shows a similar velocity to his slider (85.3 vs 86.6) though with more vertical drop. Abreu most commonly located it out of the zone (39% Zone) down and frequently off the glove side of the plate, inducing hitters to chase 32.6% of the time and putting up an excellent 19.2% SwStr.

Thrown just 3 times (2%) in 2019, the change was not a meaningful offering from Abreu, and was not in the zone or put in play in any of the 3. Velocity separation (5.7 mph), drop and fade were all unimpressive in the extremely small sample.