Andrew Abbott Is Living the High Life

The Reds are on the verge of their first playoff appearance since 2020 and their first real playoff appearance since 2013, when they lost the loudest baseball game in the history of Pittsburgh. (I go back and forth on whether 2020 counts as a real postseason, depending on what’s expedient for my argument. In this case, I think you have to score at least one run for it to count as a playoff appearance.) And in pursuit of that end, the Reds’ ownership and front office have elected… not to send reinforcements. They traded for Sam Moll at the deadline, but that’s it. The Reds are more relevant than they’ve been in a decade, and this poor team is getting Siege of Jadotville’d. Water is running low, and help is not coming.

So it’s all up to you, Andrew Abbott.

It’s a lot to ask of a rookie, but Abbott has already shouldered an outsize load, with a 2.35 ERA over 11 starts in the majors. How good has he been? I’d argue he’s overtaken college baseball media superstar Stephen Schoch for the title of most famous member of the 2021 Virginia Cavaliers.

Among the 59 rookie pitchers with at least 40 innings pitched this season, Abbott is fourth in WAR and third in ERA. The only two rookies with lower ERAs this year, Yennier Cano and Tyler Holton, are both relievers. He’s seventh in K-BB%, trailing only Taj Bradley and Eury Pérez among starters.

Abbott’s rough start against the Cubs on Monday, in which he gave up four earned runs in 3.1 innings, was one of just two in his whole career that didn’t qualify as a quality start. And lest that conjure up images of Mike Leake, Abbott has allowed zero runs in five of his 11 career starts, and one run or less in seven of 11. That’s more than just keeping your team in the game; that’s winning it by yourself.

Unlike Pérez, who’s physically about as spectacular as pitchers get, Abbott is short and blocky, just 6-foot and 180 pounds, with a compact, almost matter-of-fact left-handed delivery. He doesn’t throw conspicuously hard, and the pitch movement section of his Baseball Savant page is replete with blue-highlighted text — specifically, in the area of vertical movement. Despite being short for a pitcher (or perhaps because he’s short for a pitcher), he throws from a high arm slot, and none of his secondary pitches have as much downward movement as they should.

Abbott Elementary, cause he schooled 'em. @andrewabbott33 pic.twitter.com/lXAkXtOzHy

— Cincinnati Reds (@Reds) July 2, 2023

What that means is hitters get under the ball all the time. Among the 144 pitchers with at least 60 major league innings this season, Abbott is the most extreme fly ball pitcher out there, with a FB% of 56.9 and a GB/FB ratio of 0.43. Guys like Marcus Stroman and Logan Webb will induce about six times as many grounders per fly ball as Abbott does.

Now, you won’t find Abbott near the top of the leaderboards for inducing popups; he’s 77th out of that 144 pitcher sample in IFFB%. And his opponent wOBA on fly balls, .310, is better than average, but it’s not in the top 25 among pitchers with at least 90 fly balls allowed. But what if you take out his four-seamer? That’s the only pitch he throws with average-or-better vertical movement — the only pitch unsuspecting hitters wouldn’t get under.

When we talk about using secondary pitches to induce weak contact, the image that comes to mind is usually a soft ground ball. But the same principle can work if you flip the picture upside-down — if a pitcher can get hitters to hit the bottom half of the ball consistently. Two of the best pitchers in baseball at doing this are the Rogers twins, both of whom throw from low arm angles, especially Tyler.

How does Abbott achieve the same thing as an over-the-top guy? The orthodox way to get weak contact in the air is to throw a hard, downward-breaking curveball or changeup that conditions hitters to swing under the fastball and pop it up, but Abbott does that with just his secondary pitches. When batters make contact with Abbott’s secondary pitches, they get under it 43.9% of the time, according to Baseball Savant. He might be the best pitcher in the league at getting outs in the air with his breaking and off-speed stuff.

Abbott put up some outrageous strikeout numbers in the minor leagues — 271 punchouts in 185 innings — but I suspect a lot of that has to do with coming out of the draft with four years of experience in the ACC and facing less polished competition at the lower levels. Now, it’s all about the popups and soft fly balls.

As with any rookie who gets by on an unusual strategy, there are legitimate questions about how long he can keep this up. And at the risk of getting a little too sabermetrics 2.0 on you, yes, Abbott’s strand rate starts with a nine and his opponent BABIP is .235. His FIP is 3.90. On the other hand, he would be leading the major leagues in ERA right now if he had enough innings to qualify; of course he’s going to regress. Though he may not regress as much as you might think; as an extreme fly ball pitcher who’s demonstrated an extreme ability to get weak contact on balls in the air, he ought to run a low BABIP. It also explains how he’s managing to run a 9.9% HR/FB rate despite pitching his home games at a stadium where Ben Revere could’ve hit 20 dingers a year. (With that said, Abbott’s HR/FB rate on the road is 6.7%; at home it’s 13.0, which is not a million miles from the leaguewide rate of 14.7% at GABP.)

“Can this slightly odd rookie keep up this outlier performance?” is obviously a fun and useful question to ask in any circumstance, but in this case, the answer will go a long way toward determining the NL Central race. Abbott has been Cincinnati’s best starting pitcher by far this season. What makes the Reds’ inability to secure reinforcements in the rotation all the more galling is how obvious it is that they need help there. They are 20th in the league in both ERA- and pitcher WAR. Their rotation is 27th in the league in those categories. Reds starting pitchers make up just 26.5% of the team’s total WAR, which is 23rd in the league.

That last ratio isn’t troubling on its own. In fact, six of the seven teams below the Reds on the list are in the playoff hunt: the Red Sox, Giants, Orioles, Rangers, Dodgers, and Braves. But the Dodgers and Orioles went out and got starting pitching at the deadline. The Rangers, who traded for Max Scherzer and Jordan Montgomery, got lots of it. Cincinnati’s plan is to wait for Hunter Greene and Nick Lodolo to come back.

Greene and Lodolo are both fine pitchers, but I have two objections to Cincinnati putting all its eggs in that basket. First, I don’t know how big the overlap is between Reds fandom and Arsenal fandom, but for most of the late 2000s and early 2010s, Manchester United and Chelsea would go out and sign the biggest names on the transfer market, while Arsene Wenger said something like, “Eventually Abou Diaby and Tomáš Rosický won’t be injured anymore, and that’ll be like a new signing.” (Diaby and Rosický were never not hurt, and Arsenal finished fourth every year.)

Second, Lodolo and Greene aren’t slated to return until the end of the month. That’s one of the two remaining months left in the regular season. In context, that’s a really long time to wait in a tight three-team division race, particularly when both the Brewers and Cubs brought help in more help than Cincinnati at the deadline. Yes, that plan is a big bet on Lodolo and Greene, but by extension it’s a big bet on Abbott as well, as the young fly ball-happy lefthander now has to carry the rotation for another three or four weeks.