BALTIMORE — Red Sox assistant hitting coach Ben Rosenthal remembers vividly what it was like to watch Wilyer Abreu as a teenager.
During a pair of fall instructional leagues when both Rosenthal (as a coach) and Abreu (as a player) were in the Astros farm system following the 2017 and 2018 seasons, the outfielder was skinny with virtually no power, but still showed a knack for finding the barrel and drilling line drives.
“I was like, ‘That can play,’ ” said Rosenthal. “The swing was always there.”
So, too, was a good understanding of the strike zone and the kind of pitches he should attack. But at the time, Abreu lacked bat speed and with it, power. In his first three professional seasons from 2017-19, he hit a total of two homers. For him to emerge as a valuable big leaguer, that was going to have to change.
“You have to hit it hard enough to have a seat at the table,” said Rosenthal.
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Fast forward five years — and plenty of time working on strength and conditioning as well as nutrition — to 2024. The once skinny kid is now a barrel-chested 24-year-old who, at 5 feet, 10 inches and 215 pounds, generates the sort of bat speed possessed by power hitters. According to Baseball Savant, Abreu’s average bat speed on swings is 74.8 miles per hour — just behind sluggers Bobby Witt Jr., Austin Riley, Tyler O’Neill, and Carlos Correa, and just in front of Pete Alonso, William Contreras, and Fernando Tatís Jr.
That trait, combined with a good understanding of the strike zone and the pitches he can drive, has helped Abreu emerge as one of the most impactful rookies in the game in 2024 — a notion that received more evidence in an 8-3 Red Sox win over the Orioles on Tuesday.
In the first inning, Abreu scooped a Grayson Rodriguez changeup at the bottom of the strike zone, getting the barrel to the ball and driving it over the right-field scoreboard in Camden Yards for his sixth homer of the year.
The shot by the two-hole hitter immediately helped catalyze the offense.
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“We needed that,” said Sox manager Alex Cora, noting that the Sox had been deflated by an 11-3 loss Monday. “Right away, you can feel it in the dugout — here we go.”
Abreu has made that kind of impact with uncommon frequency for a rookie. He’s at the top of the charts in virtually all offensive categories among qualifying rookies, including average (.283), OBP (.357), slugging (.513), and extra-base hits. Abreu combines his aggressive, fast swings with an ability to focus on pitches in the strike zone.
He’s swung at roughly 30 percent of pitches out of the zone, slightly under the league average chase rate of 31 percent, while turning loose on 73 percent of the pitches in the strike zone — above the league rate of 69 percent.
“My whole philosophy is to stay in the zone and to swing at pitches only that I can do damage with,” Abreu said through a translator. “Even though [the homer] wasn’t the greatest contact because I was out in front, that’s what I’m looking to do — hit those pitches that are in the zone.”
It’s a combination that has quickly put him in a position of considerable responsibility. While Abreu was squeezed out of the outfield mix in the initial weeks of the season, he’s now not only forged a near-everyday role but has occupied the No. 2 slot in the order for most of the past three weeks.
“He’s a guy that dominates the strike zone,” said Cora, who also repeatedly praised Abreu’s defense and baserunning. “When you do that, and you have a swing like his — it’s very similar to [those of a lot of standout Astros players], it’s close to the body, short to [the ball] and fast — you’re going to be successful.”
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For Abreu, such accolades underscore how far he has come, and the extent to which he has defied expectations across a professional career that has featured a wealth of speed bumps and where progress has not always been direct. He was never a top-100 prospect, and wasn’t considered a top prospect in either the Astros or Red Sox systems until after he’d made his big league debut last year.
Abreu didn’t view such oversights as slights — but he did remain confident in his abilities, and now takes satisfaction in his emergence as a young player upon whom the Sox are now relying heavily.
“I’ve never really cared about where they rank me. I just know that at the end of the day, I have to go out there and do the job. And I know I’m going to give my best regardless,” said Abreu. “It feels great to have that trust that [Cora] has in me. I’m just trying to go out there and have as much fun as possible, make the most out of the opportunity and just do my best.”
He’s doing that with sufficient frequency that Cora is repeating a refrain about Abreu so often that it’s become almost a punchline.
“I will keep saying it the whole time,” Cora chuckled after the game. “He’s a good player.”
The Sox will not mind if their manager has reason to keep repeating the claim.
Alex Speier can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @alexspeier.