Philadelphia Phillies Pitching Prospect Needs Bounce-Back Campaign

If this Philadelphia Phillies pitching prospect is going to reach the Majors Leagues one day, he’ll have to put this season behind him.

Feb 14, 2024; Clearwater, FL, USA; Philadelphia Phillies Pitcher Mick Abel throws a pitch during the first day of Phillies Spring Training at Baycare Ballpark in Clearwater, Florida. / Dave Nelson-USA TODAY Sports

The Philadelphia Phillies are hoping for some more home-grown starting pitching to come up the pipeline in the next couple of years.

The trade made in July that sent two prospects — pitchers George Klassen and Samuel Aldegheri — for reliever Carlos Estévez makes that need more evident. Aldegheri was recently called up by his new team, the Los Angeles Angels, and just made his Major League debut.

One of those pitchers the Phillies are counting on one day is Mick Abel, a right-hander who is ranked the organization’s No. 6 prospect according to MLB Pipeline. He’s pitching for Triple-A Lehigh Valley, just a rung away from Philadelphia.

But this season has been one to forget for the 23-year-old, as Baseball America recently explained in an article profile one prospect from each organization that is hoping for a bounce-back year in 2025.

The season has been problematic in many ways for Abel. He is 3-10 with a 6.06 ERA in 21 starts. It is, by far, his worst pro season. One way to quantifying that is that he’s never finished with an ERA higher than 4.43, and that was in his first pro season with Class-A Clearwater.

But Baseball America pointed out that Abel is having an issue with walks, and part of that could be due to the automated ball-strike system they use at Triple-A. It’s also a system that, one day, will probably migrate to the Majors.

Abel has already set a career-high for walks in a season with 67. His walk rate is 15%, much higher that what MLB teams want and among the highest at Triple-A.

That, combined with his .275 opponent batting average — also a career-high — shows that he hasn’t refined his location in the zone.

Until Abel figures that out, it’s going to be hard for him to convince the Phillies that he is ready for a call-up.

Abel was the Phillies’ first-round pick in 2020 out of Jesuit High School in Portland, Ore., but didn’t pitch due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2021 he started 14 games with Clearwater, where he went 1-3 with a 4.44 ERA. He struck out 66 and walked 267.

He showed great progress in 2022, as he split time between High Class-A Jersey Shore and Reading, he went 8-11 with a 3.90 ERA in 23 starts. He struck out 130 and walked 50.

Last season he also played for two different teams — Reading and Lehigh Valley — and went 5-6 with a 4.13 ERA, including 132 strikeouts and 65 walks in 113.1 innings. Notably, batters hit just .192 off of him.