How a pitching session in the Dominican Republic launched Bryan Abreu on path to Astros

Building a dynasty from the ground up hinges on the ability to differentiate a flash in the pan from long-term potential and to nurture the latter into fruition. The Astros are preparing to play their fourth World Series in six years, sustained by a core of mostly homegrown prospects who ooze consistency and excellence. Bryan Abreu has at last found both. 

Nearly a decade has passed since Abreu signed with the Astros as a 16-year-old international free-agent pitcher in 2013 out of the Dominican Republic. He made his big league debut as a reliever in 2019 and made Houston’s ALCS roster that year, only to spend the next two seasons struggling with his command and his weight. He spent last winter fine-tuning his delivery and returned this season armed with a slider considered one of the best pitches in the Astros’ staff-wide arsenal — as well as a renewed confidence. 

After a 2022 regular season in which he set career highs in innings and strikeouts per nine innings, Abreu has blossomed into one of Houston’s most lethal arms and assumed a prominent role in the bullpen during the team’s postseason run. 

Abreu has pitched in six of the Astros’ seven games this postseason and has not allowed a run through 6⅓ innings. 

While his career thus far has been as unpredictable as his logic-defying breaking ball, Abreu is grateful for the winding journey. 

On the eve of pitching in his first World Series, Abreu said he still thinks often of his first tryout for the Astros as a teenaged prospect at the team’s Dominican academy. 

“Every single time that I’m going to bed,” he said. “I just see how far I’ve come and what I’ve been through.” 

Former Astros international scouting director Oz Ocampo, who on Thursday was hired to be an assistant GM with the Marlins, also recalls Abreu’s tryout very clearly. Ocampo watched Abreu’s workout alongside Marc Russo, the Astros’ international crosschecker at the time, and Rafael Belén, then the team’s national supervisor. 

“He was skinny as a beanpole,” Ocampo said. “I don’t know how much he weighed, but it had to be like 165 pounds. Super skinny legs, but he had a frame that looked like it had some physical projection to it, and he was athletic on the mound. Had a clean arm action, good delivery. His fastball was 84-85 miles per hour, and he could spin it. He had a pretty good curveball.” 

But as the three Astros scouts watched Abreu throw a simulated inning, they noticed that the young righthander wasn’t maximizing use of the lower half of his body, which is imperative for pitchers to generate power without exhausting their arms. 

Russo stopped the tryout and went out to the mound. He told Abreu what the scouts had noticed, showed him some grip adjustments for his breaking ball, then instructed him to throw a curveball for a strikeout. Abreu bounced a pitch in front of the plate. Russo asked him to try again, and Abreu threw a curveball strike. 

“Then the next inning he came out, he showed that he made those adjustments with his lower half, and you saw the breaking ball got better, the curveball got better, the fastball was better,” Ocampo said. “He threw more strikes, and you could see more connectedness with the delivery. … The big thing was his ability to adapt and make adjustments. The fact that he was able to not only make the adjustment with his delivery in terms of understanding what he had to do but then apply it physically on the field and do so in a very quick time period was something that really stood out.” 

On-the-fly adjustments were nothing new to Abreu. 

Born in the Dominican Republic capital of Santo Domingo, Abreu grew up in what he described as a “poor environment” in a rough neighborhood. At 13, he was working in construction and helping his uncle, a mechanic, fix cars. Basketball was his first love, and he only started playing baseball at 14. Abreu was a gifted athlete, tall and lanky, and in his early days on the diamond found success as a hitter and outfielder in addition to pitching. Turning professional in either sport was never really on his mind. 

One day after church, his mother asked him to pick between basketball and baseball because he needed to focus his energy, she said. Abreu chose baseball, with the secret intention of still sneaking away every once in a while to shoot hoops on the court near his house. A growing love for baseball and realization of its financial payoff soon rendered that vision obsolete. Two years later, he signed with the Astros for $40,000. 

Houston’s organization — and in particular former Astros pitching coach Brent Strom — initially envisioned Abreu as a long-term starting pitcher, but Abreu has never started a game at the major league level. 

He pitched 54⅓ innings and struck out 90 batters across two levels of minor league ball in 2018, prompting a call-up to the majors the following season. But Abreu’s ability to throw strikes dissipated during a nightmarish 2020 season, when he pitched just 3⅓ major league innings with a 0.43 strikeout-to-walk ratio. 

In 2021, Abreu made the Astros’ opening-day roster in the bullpen but again struggled with control and was sent down to Triple-A for the final two months of the season. During the offseason, he played Dominican ball and worked on shortening his delivery, which in turn increased his velocity. 

Erick Abreu, the pitching coach at Class AAA Sugar Land, has worked with Bryan Abreu at various levels of the Astros’ organization since 2014. They worked together for two years in the Dominican Republic, then in rookie ball and the Astros’ High-A affiliate as well as through various spring trainings and instructional leagues. 

When Bryan was down in Sugar Land last season, he and Erick spent time reinforcing the mechanics of his delivery. Their goal was to shorten his arm action and be consistent with timing while keeping his arm connected to his trunk through hip rotation and moving down the mound. 

“The delivery was a little inconsistent due to him being so strong, and sometimes the mental part plays a big role. Because you can see him holding himself back, like trying to aim, trying to guide the pitches,” Erick Abreu said. “In my opinion, just thinking, 'I don't want to throw balls.' I think he's getting to the point that he's trusting himself and he's learning to let the ball come out of his hand, knowing that he can be in the zone with intent. So I think it comes down to a trust point. He knows he can be nasty.” 

Abreu finished the 2022 regular season with the lowest ERA (1.94) of any Astros pitcher not named Ryne Stanek or Justin Verlander. Stanek is a sixth-year major league veteran who set an Astros record for lowest season ERA by a reliever. Verlander is a future Hall of Famer whom Abreu idolized — and still does. 

At spring training in 2019, Abreu was ecstatic when Verlander picked him as a teammate for a game of  two-on-two basketball. Now they are co-authors of Houston’s thus-undefeated postseason run. 

Abreu did not pitch in the 2020 or 2021 postseasons. His lone playoff appearance prior to this year was in the 2019 ALCS against the Yankees, against whom he gave up a homer and two earned runs in the ninth inning of the Astros’ Game 1 loss. 

This year in the playoffs, Abreu has usurped Stanek in the Astros’ hierarchy of late-inning leverage relief weapons. Through 6⅓ scoreless innings this postseason, Abreu has allowed three hits and two walks to 24 batters faced with 10 strikeouts. 

“He's aggressive, and he attacks in the zone, and that's credit to him,” Ocampo said. “Pitching coaches, catchers — I mean, people have worked with him, but really, at the end of the day, it's about the player. And he's just attacking his best stuff in the zone knowing that his stuff will get hitters out. It's special to watch that. Knowing where he came from and where he started out, both physically and mentally and in all aspects, and now where he's at — I mean, he's just matured and grown up so much.” 

Astros catcher Martín Maldonado, who caught 40⅓ of the 60⅓ innings Abreu threw this regular season, echoed Ocampo’s sentiment. 

“He understands how good he is,” Maldonado said. “He understands that if he can attack the strike zone, throw strikes, hitters are gonna have a tough time hitting him.”  

Abreu’s slider had a 51.3 percent whiff rate in the regular season and is regarded as an anomaly among similar pitches for its combination of vertical and horizontal movement. Its velocity averages 88 mph but can reach 90, making it difficult for hitters to diagnose the pitch until it’s too late. 

Erick Abreu said the Astros first began developing Bryan Abreu’s slider in 2018, something major league pitching coaches Josh Miller and Bryan Murphy have continued to morph into the pitch we see today. 

“He always had this ability to spin the ball,” Erick Abreu said. “He had that big breaking ball back in the day, so we figured with a little smaller breaking ball, due to his ability to spin the ball, it was gonna be a little easier for him to land that pitch in the strike zone. So that's when we started messing with the slider, like a shorter breaking ball.” 

Combine the slider with Abreu’s fastball, which maxed out at 100.8 mph this season, as well as a high-spin curveball, and you have the makings of an elite pitch mix. 

In Game 2 of the ALCS, during the eighth inning with the Astros leading the Yankees 3-2, Abreu surrendered a one-out walk to Harrison Bader. After Bader advanced on an Aaron Judge fly out, Abreu punched out Giancarlo Stanton on a 99 mph fastball and stranded the Yankees’ tying run on second base. 

The inning brought back memories of Abreu’s troubles from the previous two seasons, or even earlier this regular season, when the sight of him emerging from the pen in a close game gave Astros fans anxiety. 

“Nowadays he’s been a lot more consistent, but I remember those outings where he used to get in trouble walking one, walking two, a wild pitch and then coming back and striking out three guys,” Erick Abreu said. “There was a point that it was like, ‘Seriously, Bryan, you doing this on purpose or what is going on?’ It’s just a pleasure every time I see him pitching now and I see how easily the ball comes out of his hand. Some of the bat swings that he induces with those breaking balls, it’s amazing.” 

Abreu turned into Mr. Reliable to end the season. He recorded an 0.66 ERA in his last 27 regular-season appearances with 40 strikeouts, and his usage in the playoffs is further evidence he has earned the trust of Astros manager Dusty Baker. 

Roughly four hours before every Astros home game, when pitchers’ throwing practice begins down the right-field line, Abreu bounds up the dugout steps and instead turns left, heading in the opposite direction. He makes the rounds to the Minute Maid Park security employees stationed on the field and greets each person with a firm handshake and a beaming smile.  

This is as predictable a part of Abreu’s pregame routine as playing catch, and it perfectly encapsulates the attitude that endears him to even the seasoned veterans in the Astros clubhouse. 

Héctor Neris, a ninth-year reliever in his first season with the Astros, made it a point to take Abreu under his wing. 

“I saw Abreu in spring training when he threw a bullpen, and I saw what he had and thought, ‘That guy can be here for a long time,’ ” Neris said. 

“Off the mound, he’s somebody who likes to have fun,” Maldonado said. “He’s always joking around, laughing in the clubhouse. I think on the mound, he just wants to be out there and do his best version of him.” 

Such ambition threatened to handicap Abreu earlier in his career, when bouts of inconsistent command could send him into a spiral of self-doubt. He and Erick Abreu credit the Astros’ mental skills department, including sports psychologist Andy Nuñez, for helping him contend with disappointment and compartmentalize each outing. 

“He used to carry the failure a little bit for too long, and that was affecting his future performance,” Erick Abreu said. “That's something that he's doing a lot better (with) now. Either do good or do bad, that's in the past. ‘I got to get ready for the next one.’ ” 

The next one, whether it is in Friday’s Game 1 at Minute Maid Park or later in the World Series, will be the biggest outing of Abreu’s career. 

“I'm the kind of guy that always says everything has a process, everything happens for a reason,” he said. “And I just took my process the best way. I don't frustrate myself. I just learn about my mistakes that I made in the past, and now I just feel that I'm a different person. More mature. I know what I'm doing. I know how I was failing, and I think that that's the details that I'm fixing right now.”