Will Brewers Make Abner Uribe Part of Their Devin Williams Replacement Plan—Or Give Him a Fresh Start Elsewhere?

After a meteoric rise in 2023, Abner Uribe stalled out in ugly fashion in 2024. He has both a four-seam fastball and a sinker, and each can eclipse 100 miles per hour. He also has one of the filthiest sweepers in baseball, especially when you account for the way that breaking ball plays off all that velocity. All of that talent shined through in his rookie campaign in 2023, as Uribe overwhelmed big-league hitters and made them look like minor-leaguers at times. That made it all the more frustrating when, this spring, something was simply off.

Uribe's command was a mess from the jump, and he would not find it again all year. In 14 appearances with the Brewers, he walked 12 and uncorked three wild pitches. The inability to fill up the zone also cost him strikeouts, and although it was still hard to square him up, his ERA soared to 6.91. Then, after an immature dust-up with José Siri of the Rays in early May, Uribe was suspended by the league, demoted to Triple-A Nashville by the team, and injured while playing there, forcing him to undergo knee surgery. Seasons can't go much wronger.

The good news, of course, is that the injury was not to Uribe's arm, and that the team says he should be 100 percent ready to go upon arrival for spring training. This setback season also saved some bullets for him, in a way, and the Brewers' bullpen did fine without him. On the other hand, the Brewers' bullpen did fine without him. They might now feel that Uribe is expendable, in the right circumstances. To be sure, it's Trevor Megill, not Uribe, who stands first in line to take over the closer's gig after the team trades Williams. Several other players have a chance to zoom past Uribe on the organizational depth chart, too. Does that mean the team will trade Uribe before the hot stove burns itself out?

If they do, it won't be just to get rid of him. While everyone was disappointed in the way he handled his own failures early in 2024 and the decisions he made amid building tensions between the Crew and the visiting Rays on the day when he earned his suspension, the organization has not soured on his makeup entirely, and his talent is still very much evident. He's most likely to hang around, absent any additions or subtractions beyond dealing Williams.

After the Brewers took Connor Thomas in the Rule 5 Draft Wednesday, the squeeze in the bullpen got a bit tighter, because Thomas can only stay in the organization if he remains on the MLB roster all season. In general, though, the team's relief corps is remarkably flexible. Of their top 12 or 13 candidates for a place in the pen, only Joel Payamps and Nick Mears can't be optioned to the minors. Uribe, too, can be thus stashed away. Logistically, some of that flexibility evaporates as the season goes on, when injuries and the urgent progress of young players who aren't yet on the 40-man roster force the team to make unexpected changes. Right now, though, it's easy to see how Uribe could be kept without getting in the way of the team's efforts to build another superb pitching staff.

When Uribe is right, he's as good as any reliever in the Milwaukee organization. Because they've amassed so much depth, however, the Brewers don't have to roll the dice on him being his best self. They don't even need to keep him around at all; doing so would purely be a means of ensuring that their depth remains bountiful into the middle of the 2025 campaign. His stuff profile is tantalizing, but after he showed such volatility in 2024, it's a welcome luxury for the team that they can afford not to overlook either that extraordinary talent or his equally salient faults. What they decide to do with him can boil down to what options present themselves throughout the winter and spring, and that's a good position in which to be.