Abreu adding another weapon to arsenal
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — Bryan Abreu delivered his dominant 2023 season as Astros setup man on the strength of two pitches. A simple formula proved stifling. Abreu still toyed this winter with expanding it.
Abreu throws one of baseball’s toughest sliders, and using it more last season made it harder for hitters to jump his fourseam fastball. Opponents hit .185 against the slider that Abreu threw nearly 60% of the time and just .165 against his fastball. He posted a 1.75 ERA with 100 strikeouts in 72 innings.
For a potential new wrinkle, Abreu said, he practiced a changeup this offseason. Abreu has not thrown a changeup in the majors. He mixed in a curveball as a third pitch in 2021 and ’22 but scrapped it last year.
Abreu said Friday he “used to throw a changeup before” but did not have good command of it. He feels that repeating his delivery better now could help remedy that issue and he has been “practicing it a lot” over the break.
“Sometimes when (hitters) see you a lot, they tend to adapt,” Abreu said. “‘I know that’s Abreu, fastball and slider, we just have to figure out where he’s going to throw it.’ And sometimes you just try to be a little unpredictable to them, and we think that’s going to be a really good addition for me.”
Abreu was highly effective against both left- and righthanded hitters last season. Lefties owned a lower average (.183) than righties (.188) against his sliders, but they did fare slightly better against his fastball (.189). Abreu leaned on the slider against lefties, throwing it 62.5% of the time against them.
Abreu said another focus of his winter in the Dominican Republic was continuing to hone his command. He described a simple drill for it. Abreu said he and friends set up a tire and threw softballs at it, aiming for the middle, to work on keeping a good arm angle and release point.
“If you have a little bit of a slip and catch your arm behind, the ball is just going to go away,” Abreu said. “If you hit the tire, that means you’re in the strike zone. If you don’t, that means you’re kind of opening early or yanking or something. Just trying to be fluid with your delivery and keep your fingers behind the ball.”
While Abreu did issue 31 walks in 72 innings last season, he held opponents to a .560 OPS with a 34.8% strikeout rate that ranked seventh-highest among qualified relievers. Abreu, notably, also shouldered a careerhigh workload, throwing 801⁄3 innings, including the playoffs.
Abreu authored a 32-outing scoreless streak that ended in the ALCS, when he surrendered runs in three of his last four appearances against Texas. Abreu said he was “kind of tired” after the season and scaled back his throwing slightly this offseason: “But besides that, everything was pretty normal.”
Abreu entered most of his appearances in the eighth inning. That could change this season following the Astros’ signing of closer Josh Hader, whose arrival moves Ryan Pressly to a set-up role. Pressly and Abreu could also be options to close when Hader is unavailable. Abreu said he was “pretty excited” by the news of Hader’s signing, which gives Houston arguably baseball’s most formidable back-end bullpen trio.
“I always say that I’m going to be here to give it all for the team,” Abreu said. “I just have to be healthy and be ready for them.”