The Angels are no strangers to aggressive big league callups, and that was the case for 22-year-old Walbert Ure\u00f1a on Opening Day.<\/p>\n
An undersized righthander, Ure\u00f1a has a power arsenal that helped him thrive at Double-A Rocket City in the second half last season and into the Cactus League this year.<\/p>\n
His strikeout rate climbed from about 18% before the all-star break last year to nearly 25% afterward. His walk rate fell from about 13% to 11%. He led all qualified Double-A pitchers with a 58.5% groundball rate. <\/p>\n
Ure\u00f1a owns a power arsenal highlighted by a four-seam and sinker combo in which each pitch sits 97-101 mph. He throws a power changeup that grades as plus, but it is the growth of his slider and control that helped him step forward the most.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s continued to get stronger physically, which has improved his ability to repeat his delivery, and the strike-throwing has improved,\u201d Angels assistant GM Joey Prebynski said. \u201cYou get to the \u2018stuff\u2019 profile and how\u2019s been able to refine that.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the second half of last year and into spring training, the breaking ball continued to develop. It\u2019s a testament to Walbert, but it\u2019s also a combination of all the momentum he\u2019s been able to create and the position he\u2019s put himself into going into the 2026 season.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Angels added Ure\u00f1a to the 40-man roster last offseason. They signed him out of the Dominican Republic in 2021.<\/p>\n
Ure\u00f1a\u2019s first big league stint lasted just two outings before he was optioned to Triple-A Salt Lake. In his MLB debut on Opening Day, he threw two-thirds of an inning and collected a hold. In his second outing, he went one inning and allowed six runs, all of which were unearned because of his own throwing error.<\/p>\n
\u201cWherever Walbert ended up starting the year, we expected him to be a pitcher who would impact the big league roster, whatever the timing of that is,\u201d Prebynski said. <\/p>\n
Ure\u00f1a will continue his development as a starter at Triple-A.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Angels are no strangers to aggressive big league callups, and that was the case for 22-year-old Walbert…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[5,4,3935],"class_list":{"0":"post-670008","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-organization-reports"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116368539887255444","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670008","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}