Philip Abner rose quickly through the system as he made the jump from high A Hillsboro all the way up to even appearing down the stretch for a completely depleted Dbacks bullpen and made his major league debut September 19. The lefty appeared in 53 minor league games in 2025 posting a respectable 3.07 ERA across some very hitter friendly minor league ballparks. Abner fits this new shift we have seen in the organization towards high arm slot cutting 4-seam fastball guys. While his fastball averaged just under 91 mph in the minors, he was still able to rack up the strikeouts posting a 10.7 k/9 thanks to its deceptive cutting action. Even more interesting for me was when he really started having success in Reno, he was throwing the 4 seamer a staggering 62% of the time while striking out an absurd 36.7% of the AAA batters despite only getting a low 21% chase rate. This means that he was striking guys out left and right in the zone with a fastball that was averaging just 91 mph! Prostuff+ doesn’t even like the pitch that much giving it just a 94. Something about a cutting action on a 4 seamer with flat sub 15” IVB seems to mess with hitters. Especially when paired with a flat slider and a cross fire arm delivery. Dbacks may have figured out a glitch in the matrix here with these high slot cutting 4 seam guys who seem to be tough to pick up for some reason.
In a recent interview, Hazen came forward with some interesting details surrounding guys who have borderline big league stuff representing a change in organizational philosophy. He said they were going to start with the guys with borderline big league stuff and be more aggressive about training and throwing programs to push their pitchers maybe more aggressively than in previous years. In my opinion, a guy like Abner represents a perfect candidate for this type of change in training given his projectable frame and deception. If he can add a couple ticks to a already deceptive pitch, we could have something here. If not, well it will still be interesting to follow the high slot cutting fastball phenomenon we have witnessed with pitching development within this organization this past season into next year.