It’s been a time for the young man
Pitching as a profession, as one’s chosen career path, is inherently hard. The minor league landscape is littered with players that were once promising young arms, destined to dominate in the major leagues by the seers on draft day. For every Paul Skenes, a pitcher that arrives in the minor leagues ready to go and face major league hitters almost immediately, there is a Tyler Kolek or a Todd Van Poppel or a Brien Taylor.
The Phillies’ own history is full of pitchers that were drafted with the hopes of their arriving in Philadelphia, only to go on to pitch in All-Star games, maybe earn a Cy Young vote or two and eventually lead the team to postseason success. We have seen them before, the names still fresh in our memories, full of pain and despair.
Gavin Floyd.
The Baby Aces.
These are but a few of the pitchers that had promise, only to see it unfulfilled with the team. For a while, it looked as though Mick Abel was going to join them. A first round pick that was surpassed by several names, eventually succumbing to the same pressure that hobbled so many other’s career paths.
And then came this year.
Coming into 2025, Abel had struggled. He had hovered in that netherregion of “top propsect still, but needs to get things going”, the one that seems to grasp so many pitchers that are trying to find their footing. 2024 looked like it was rock bottom for him, an ERA over six, walk rates that suggested only the faintest ideas of what the strike zone is, all culminating in a season in which not just one prospect person wondered what his ultimate role was.
Now Abel’s option clock has started and he only has so much time to polish his strike-throwing before the Phillies will be forced to put him in the bullpen, or do something else, like trade him to a franchise that has the time and opportunity to keep developing him as a starter
A lot of his issues in the past were mental. The physical tools have always been there; it’s been the approach to pitching, the little intricacies that need to be experienced in game play that have plagued him. Coming into 2025, Abel spoke about that part of the game, about how it needed to be better for him to find success.
It’s just not overthinking everything and being able to take in information and process it in a very simple manner and decide, is this going to help me or is this going to hurt me? … The key to it all is just simplifying the approach, not overthinking, knowing that I’m on a mound to compete.
This year has been an entirely different story for Abel. His numbers across the board are all very much improved and he has the stuff that says it’s all very much real. People in the know are noticing the change, including Matt Winkelman:
With a 2.88 ERA over his first 6 starts of the year, Mick Abel is easily off to his best start of his career. He is getting quick outs, not letting situations spiral, and not putting himself in trouble. On the base level, he is throwing more strikes and his walk rate is down from 15.1% to 9.1%. His strikeout rate is moderately up from 22.7% to 25.2%, and he has a more reasonable BABIP of .292 (it was .346 in 2024) driven by slightly fewer line drives and some more ground balls…All of these changes should be sustainable, but none of them really jump Abel’s ceiling, they raise his floor. Abel has not recaptured that front end upside, but he is looking like he could be a #3/#4 for a team fairly soon.
The thing that has always gotten lost in the Mick Abel story has been his age. It can be easy to forget how young he still is. Drafted in 2020 at 18 years old, there has been a bit of prospect fatigue that has set in since he has been with the organization for so long. He hasn’t rushed to the major leagues, taking it slow and steady these past five years. That slow and steady pace has been warranted as he has not performed well enough to deserve a promotion, the team instead letting him build up each level he has gone to. It has served him well as he has a lot of minor league innings under his belt and as he has mentioned, in the article linked above, being in those situations can only serve a player for the good.
Yet in this age of prospects getting the majors faster and faster, when a pitchers is on a more methodical pace, it can feel like a disappointment, like something has gone wrong. We’re expecting prospect to come out of the gate and be good rather than understanding that development is not linear. It’s leading to expectations that aren’t matched and labels applied that are undeserving. While it could be argued that Abel might have been somewhat deserving of the “bust” label, until he has completely faltered, it really shouldn’t be given out. This year is proving, so far at least, that maybe it just takes time for things to all fall into place. Maybe a few of the puzzle pieces were on the floor, waiting to be picked up and put where they needed to be. Now that Abel appears to have found them, the puzzle can start to be completed.
I’m happy for Abel that he is having success. It looks sustainable and gives the Phillies another depth piece that maybe they weren’t counting on. We remember the days of having to run out Sean O’Sullivan as a starter since there was nothing quality waiting in the wings of the minors. With Abel making himself an option, maybe it changes the calculus of not only the team’s pitching plans for 2025, maybe it changes their plans for the trade deadline and/or 2026 and beyond.
It’s just nice that maybe – just maybe – the team can have a pitcher avoid the pitfalls that block prospects from finding success.