After a Year of Tinkering, Abner Uribe Has Returned to Dominance

When Abner Uribe was promoted to the big leagues for the first time in 2023, it was electric. He had a wicked slider and an average fastball velocity of just under 100 mph. Few of us were ready for it, and neither were major-league hitters, who struck out 30.7% of the time against him as a rookie. In a year where serious discussions were had about who would eventually take over the mantle of closer once Devin Wiliams was inevitably traded in his walk year, Uribe threw his hat into the ring as a legitimate contender.

After cracking the team’s Opening Day roster in 2024, it seemed like we would simply get more of the same dazzling pitching from him. Instead, a new year brought new struggles. As with many relievers with wicked stuff, command is sometimes hard to come by. He had a 15.7% walk rate as a rookie, but got away with it because his strikeout and ground-ball rates were so high. In his sophomore campaign, his walk rate rose to 18.2%, and he wasn’t getting the same amount of swing-and-miss. He began to lose control, both literally and figuratively, and everything boiled over when he engaged in a meaningless physical altercation against the Tampa Bay Rays in late April, resulting in a suspension and a final season ERA of 6.91. To make matters worse, it was announced that he would need knee surgery, ending his season and preventing him from trying to right his wrongs.

It’s now 2025. Not only has Uribe avoided tussling with opposing center fielders (at least for now; let’s not jinx it), he has dialed back into what made him great in the first place. Thus grounded, he's off to a hot start. Over his first 9 ⅔ innings, he has a 0.93 ERA with a 35.3% whiff rate and a 29.7% strikeout rate. What changed? A closer look at his pitch arsenal makes two things clear: his sinker command is significantly better than where it was last year, and he seems to be pushing his breaking ball toward being a sweeper, rather than a traditional slider.

Let’s start with the sinker. The ideal sinker can be consistently placed low in the strike zone, primarily because the goal is to induce a softly-hit ground ball. It’s not a whiff-reliant pitch. Contact is actually the intention, so long as it’s not hard contact. If you want to read more about ideal characteristics, feel free to check out this FanGraphs article from a few years ago. When we look at his sinker placement from 2024, there’s far too much red in the middle.

Not only did this manifest in a higher opposing batting average, the opposing ISO was .154, far higher than it was in 2023, meaning hitters were getting to it and taking it for a ride. Nowadays, he’s still leaving it a little too close to the heart of the zone, but he's been lucky so far. When he executes and commands the pitch well, it turns into double plays.

One intrinsic metric we can use to gauge whether he’s doing what he’s supposed to with the pitch is average launch angle. Other top-tier sinkerballers like Framber Valdez have incredibly low launch angles, something that indicates a high rate of ground balls. Thus far, opposing hitters are averaging a launch angle of just -6° against Uribe's sinker, a great sign.

When it comes to reshaping his slider, it looks like the primary focus is to spread the zone laterally. Other relievers (like Blake Treinen) have found success with this strategy, implementing a very lateral sweeper that contrasts with the arm-side run on the sinker. For Uribe, here’s how the movement profile of his slider has changed over the past few seasons.

It seems like this was something he had been thinking about last year, but couldn’t reap the rewards on due to poor command. With 9.9 inches of glove-side movement on his slider and 13.3 inches of arm-side run on his sinker, there’s nearly two feet of lateral distance that separates his two primary pitches.

Don’t be fooled: there’s still plenty that can go wrong this year. Ideally, his sinker would be lower in the zone and his slider would push closer to the bottom corner. However, these are things that can and should improve as the season progresses. More than anything, it’s a relief to see him return to form, especially after a relatively long layoff, and with Trevor Megill facing struggles of his own, maybe it’s time to go back to the closer conversation.