Being a top prospect seems like it would be exhausting. The weight of the expectations placed on these players can be overwhelming. Not to mention how quickly the baseball world can turn on a player we’re tired of hearing about. Mick Abel has dealt with top 100 prospect status for the better part of five years since being the top prep arm taken in the 2020 draft. All this time, we’ve heard from scouts about how good this guy is going to be. It sounds a bit silly to say, but prospect fatigue might’ve kicked in before he even got the chance to debut. Getting pelted to the tune of a 7.76 ERA across his first 29 innings of MLB action probably wasn’t what anyone had in mind.
If we’re looking exclusively at results and peripherals, there’s not a lot to like about how Abel has pitched since being called up, I know. He’s been absolutely shelled, and the underlying stats largely back up his dreadful numbers. I say all of this to let it be known that I understand why a lot of you probably aren’t interested in Abel right now. The hype train has been stopped dead in its tracks. That said, I promise there’s a good reason he’s been talked about as a future star for as long as he has. First though, let’s address his biggest obstacle.
The Burden of a “Good Fastball”
Abel’s blessing and curse is that he was bestowed with a 4-seam fastball good enough to carry him to success at every level except for the big leagues. Being thrown hard with a distinct positive trait beyond that probably would’ve been enough about five years ago, too. Abel’s fastball comes out of his hand spinning at a surprisingly high direction for his arm slot, leading to movement that is unexpected given that his low 3/4s release. Unfortunately, this movement is very close to league average and doesn’t stand out for his release height at all. I’d say that because he does throw it hard and it does have the one other thing going for it, it’s probably still a league-average 4-seam, but it’s the kind that will get absolutely obliterated if he leaves it in bad spots, or becomes predictable with it. I’ll give you three guesses what’s happened this season.
This is the number one problem plaguing Abel. That fastball that has brought him success at every level of the minor leagues has been his undoing in the majors. More than a third of all of his 4-seamers have landed in the top third of the zone. At 33.5%, it’s the highest rate of any pitcher to throw as many fastballs as Abel has this year. He’s doing an impression of his former teammate Zack Wheeler with a fastball that can’t carry the same load as his.
Wheeler throws his in the upper third of the zone 30.9% of the time, the fifth-highest rate among starters. It works there because it’s unique, with a very low release and elite extension aiding it in making it harder to hit. Abel’s being more generic makes it easier for hitters to get to, and it’s why hitters are barreling it at nearly double the league average rate.
The Good News
As we just discussed, Abel throws a hard but mostly generic save for one positive trait 4-seamer as his primary pitch. As a high-spin supinator, he’s doing his best to produce movement despite his inability to create top-tier active spin on his fastballs. It’s playing about as poorly as it possibly could given its quality, but we’re speaking theoretically and purely about stuff in this section, so we won’t hold that against it for right now. It is, in theory, a decent fastball.
Abel’s top secondary is his weakest breaking ball from a stuff standpoint. I assume it’s the one he’s been throwing the longest because he commands it substantially better than the other two, hence the usage it sees. Despite it being the least impressive of the three in terms of bat-missing potential, it’s still a solid, if somewhat generic, curveball with power and movement.
While his 4-seam benefits from the higher than expected spin direction it comes out of his hand at, the sinker suffers a bit. As expected, his sinker comes out of the hand on a functionally identical axis, and while the seam-shifted wake it has helps, its shape is just ok at best. It should still be good for jamming righties inside and getting some called strikes.
I mentioned a bit ago when talking about the 4-seam that we’re looking purely at the stuff quality of his pitches right now, we’ll get to how he executes them and what he can do differently in that regard later. For right now, we can appreciate how nasty his slider is. Thrown with exceptionally low spin activity and movement, this is a pure gyro bullet slider that should give hitters fits.
His changeup is strange. It’s thrown with a lot of gyro spin, effectively killing IVB but also limiting its horizontal break. It’s like he reverse-engineered a splitter shape. Regardless, it has the potential to be excellent with its combination of depth, deception via release and spin traits, and uniqueness.
Lastly, we take his sweeper with a grain of salt. He’s thrown just nine of them, and they have been all over the place, but the movement he’s gotten has been excellent in the microscopic sample. Enough so that it’s worth mentioning even if he only throws this pitch about once per start right now.
The Long Road Ahead
So, we’ve at least figured out why he’s a top prospect. He’s got a strong arsenal of five pitches plus the prospective sweeper. That’s a good ball of clay for a pitching coach to work with. He doesn’t need to add anything else; he already has the tools he needs. The bad news is he doesn’t really know how to use said tools at present. We’ve already covered his woes with how he uses the 4-seam, so we can skip to the curveball. It’s difficult to tell if he’s good at commanding this pitch or not.
He zones it pretty often, usually without hanging it too badly. He’s got a knack for landing it arm-side, as well as low on the glove-side corner. And then there’s also a big set of dots way off to the sides on his pitch map because it pops out early or gets yanked a surprisingly high amount of the time, given how good it tends to look in zone. I truly have no idea what to make of that. I think it’s decent command, but I can’t say for certain. If he can clean up those waste pitches, it’s solid.
His sinker map is so close to being great. He’s great at drilling the pitch inside to righties, but when he misses it tends to wind up belt-high in the zone, and hitters can pounce on that. This is probably his best pitch execution, though, even if he’s more consistent with the 4-seam. There’s room for improvement, but we’ll take the good where we can get it in this section.
His slider map is terrible. The words won’t do it justice; look at it yourself.
For every well-placed slider low to his glove side, there are two that are directly down the middle. I honestly don’t know how he’s doing this; it seems like it would be hard to do intentionally. Please, man, throw this thing lower or further to the sides. It hasn’t burned him that badly yet, but it will if he keeps doing it.
He hasn’t really thrown enough changeups or sweepers for me to comment on his ability to command them yet, but given their usage rates and what little we’ve seen, I’m going to assume it’s not the sharpest.
As it stands, Abel is the most frustrating type of pitching prospect. One who clearly has the tools to succeed, the kind where it’s not difficult to envision him being great one day. He doesn’t have a walk problem, and he repeats his release exceptionally well. The pitch locations just aren’t there yet, and he’s getting shellacked for it despite his other talents.
I’d like to suggest more things he could work on beyond his command, but they won’t matter if he doesn’t shore this up. He has to locate his pitches better across the board. I want him to rework his arsenal to take some weight off the fastball. I’d love it if he could throw his slider 25+% of the time because the stuff is so good. If he did that with his current slider execution, he’d get sent back down for poor performance. Anything that leads to him throwing fewer 4-seamers without leaving his other pitches out to dry would be good. More sinkers, more changeups, more anything to even out his usage. I honestly think his 4-seamer could play above its quality if he used his full arsenal to keep hitters off balance so they couldn’t sit on it. The problem is that I don’t trust his ability to execute his other pitches enough yet for it to be a good idea.
I wish I had more creative and constructive things to say beyond “throw pitches in better spots”, because that can apply to any pitcher ever. The talent and model for success are clearly there. I mentioned Wheeler earlier as to who he was taking inspiration from for his fastball plan, and I honestly think they’re similar pitchers in general. They’re both low slot supinators without elite SSW traits who can keep hitters off balance with a wide arsenal of good pitches. Granted, Wheeler has much better command, and his unique release helps him gain a further edge, but that’s a hugely unfair bar to hold any pitcher to. I don’t think Abel is going to be Wheeler; let’s be very clear about that. But when I watch him pitch, I see what he could be, and I want him to get there. It might take a while; there will likely be a lot of frustration on the way, but I’m holding out hope he can put it all together.
*The sweeper active spin percentage in the table is an estimate based on the pitch’s movement and spin rate, compared to other similar pitches. His sweeper hasn’t been thrown enough to show up anywhere that posts active spin data.
Photo courtesy of Icon Sportswire | Adapted by Aaron Polcare (@abeardoesart on Bluesky and X)
