Abner Everyday: Flamethrowing Abner Uribe Has Become Brewers' Indispensable Iron Man

[Matthew Trueblood]

Image courtesy of © Benny Sieu-Imagn Images

Abner Uribe not only leads the major leagues in holds this year, but has four more (37) than Hunter Gaddis (33), who's second-best. Uribe trails only Carlos Estévez of the Royals in appearances that came in save situations. He's pitched in 73 games, trailing only Tyler Rogers, Tony Santillan, Jeremiah Estrada and Brendon Little on that leaderboard for 2025—and Uribe has gotten the Brewers at least three outs 67 of those 73 times. Only Rogers has more such appearances this year, and in fact, only Rogers and Emmanuel Clase have made it to 70 such outings in any season since the pandemic hit. Uribe is emerging as one of the most available high-leverage hurlers in the game.

It's terrifically valuable to have a trustworthy, matchup-proof setup man in a sport governed by the three-batter minimum. Such a pitcher can not only draw you closer to a win when protecting a narrow lead, but spare others within the bullpen—and make the manager's job much simpler, along the way. Uribe has overpowered both lefties and righties in 2025:

• vs. left-handed batters: .178/.313/.224, 128 batters faced, 39 strikeouts, 16 walks, 1 home run
• vs. right-handed batters: .213/.272/.287, 164 batters faced, 49 strikeouts, 11 walks, 3 home runs

A whopping 49 of Uribe's appearances have come on either zero or one day of rest, and in them, he's holding batters to an impossibly helpless .196/.292/.215 line. He's struck 34.2% of the 187 batters he's faced in those games. He can come in on consecutive days, without Pat Murphy worrying about whether he'll be effective. He can face both lefties and righties, without exposing Milwaukee to a bad matchup.

Uribe has still leaned essentially on two pitches this year, with his heavy, triple-digit sinker and his wide-sweeping slider doing all the work required of him. He's tweaked his delivery to better facilitate good location on that slider. He's not doing anything new or fancy, but he never needed to. All that his profile was missing was a bit better command, and that's what he's shown this year. He's only walked 9.2% of hitters, a figure close enough to average to shrug and keep moving when you see it on the page. Uribe has only ever needed to avoid having the walk rate be the item on the page that stopped one cold. 

When he does put a runner on base, Uribe's 55% ground ball rate leads to plenty of double plays. It also means that he gives up few home runs, which makes walks less costly. Getting ground balls and limiting free passes also contribute to the ability to get all the way through an inning.

The suite of skills Uribe boasts has layers upon layers of utility, and even if Trevor Megill can't make it back to help the Brewers in the postseason, Uribe might be good enough to serve as the relief ace on a World Series-winning team. His durability—in terms of staying healthy, and of being able to pitch well on little rest—is a source of value that ripples out to the rest of the relief corps, and it gives Murphy the freedom to use whichever other hurlers the team carries for the NLDS more aggressively and creatively. Over the long season, Uribe has proved that he can take the ball and be the bridge to the closer. In the miniature season ahead, he might get a chance to savor even greater glory.

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