After three dominant starts to begin the 2023 season in Double-A Chattanooga with the Lookouts, the Cincinnati Reds promoted left-handed starter Andrew Abbott to Triple-A this week. Abbott made his debut there yesterday afternoon with the Louisville Bats against the Iowa Cubs.
The short of it is that he had a solid debut. He allowed two runs on a 2-run homer in the 5th inning. They were the only runs he allowed as he allowed three hits, three walks, and struck out five batters in 5.0 innings pitched.
The long of it…. well, let’s get into that.
Fangraphs Eric Longenhagen noted this morning that the Southern League is being used to test out a tacky baseball this season. It was tested out last season, too, and was scrapped midseason because it wasn’t working as planned. It’s back this season with a few changes. Longenhagen states that pitchers in the league are seeing their stuff move more than in the past. That creates a little bit of a “how much can we trust stats from the Southern League” situation. He also notes that at least in his Louisville debut, Abbott’s stuff moved less than it had in his starts with Chattanooga.
| Usage | AvgVelo | TopVelo | Swings | Whiffs | |
| Fastball | 56% | 92.6 | 94.0 | 21 | 5 |
| Change | 15% | 86.6 | 88.2 | 5 | 3 |
| Slider | 28% | 81.3 | 83.1 | 10 | 3 |
Whether the breaking ball is a slider or a curveball can be debated because some pitchers say they throw one or the other even if it moves more like the one they say they aren’t throwing. We got data on Andrew Abbott from an appearance in spring training and he threw pitches that were shaped like and moved like both a curveball and a slider. In his Triple-A debut none of them moved like a curveball.
With that said, the breaking ball had the highest rate of called strikes+swinging strikes on his three pitched, coming in at 33%. His fastball wasn’t that far behind at 27%, and his change up not far behind that one at 23%.
When it comes to throwing strikes with the pitch, it was the breaking ball at the top once again. Baseball Savant has it listed as being in the zone 58% of the time. The fastball was in the zone just 48% of the time, while the change up was there just 23% of the time.
Another thing to be sure to note in the continued “let’s mess with rules in the minor leagues” category, is that this week the entirety of Triple-A is moving to the automated strikezone system. Each series is six games and for the first three games of each series the balls and strikes will be called by the Hawkeye system. The final three games of each series will be called by the umpire, but players (not managers) can challenge a call that will then be reviewed by Hawkeye.
Between a different baseball and a potentially different strikezone, Abbott had some issues throwing strikes early on. All three of his walks came in the first 1.1 innings of the game. After that he settled in and didn’t walk anyone, with his one mistake being a fastball he left up in the zone and Christopher Morel hit it 447 feet.
We’ll see how things continue in his next few starts for Louisville. With some of the struggles in the Reds rotation, Andrew Abbott could certainly be pushing for a call up if he keeps pitching well in Triple-A, even if it’s not quite to the absurdly dominant level that he was pitching in Double-A with the Lookouts.