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Oh, Andrew Abbott, we'll never be able to figure you out, will we? 

I've struggled to get a good sense of how good Abbott is for basically his entire career, but he has looked like he is starting to put it all together this season. He entered play Wednesday with a 1.51 ERA, and while that's obviously unsustainable – he's not the second coming of Bob Gibson – this is the best he's ever pitched. He has matched the elite quality of contact prevention from last season with the best strikeout rate of his career, leading to a 3.05 expected ERA, nearly a full run better than last season. And that's been enough for me to go from skeptical to mostly bought-in. 

So, of course, he finally stumbled Wednesday against the Brewers. He made it through six innings, but he allowed a season-high five runs along the way, thanks in large part to a pair of homers in the fifth and sixth innings, his first game allowing multiple homers since last August. Given my long-running skepticism, am I out on Abbott again all of a sudden?

Not so fast. 

For one thing, despite the line, Abbott actually pitched quite well Wednesday. He struck out seven and generated 13 swinging strikes on 100 pitches while pounding the zone, and when he did give up contact, it generally wasn't particularly loud – of the 19 balls in play against him, just five were hit harder than 95 mph. Which is to say, despite the disappointing performance, Abbott mostly continued to do what he's been doing all along. His 36% CSW (Called-plus Swinging strike rate) was excellent, he generated a bunch of chases, and one of the two homers was on his cutter, a pitch he almost never throws (it was just the second ball in play against the pitch all season). Hardly a reason to be concerned.

Now, I'm not saying Abbott is an ace or anything. When I say I'm "mostly bought in," I mean that I think Abbott is a top-40-ish starting pitcher, someone I want in my lineup more often than not, but not someone I expect to carry my rotation. Because, for all he does well, he's still a flyball pitcher in Cincinnati, and that can get dangerous in a hurry. If his strikeout rate – fueled by decent, but not exactly outlier swing-and-miss rates across his five pitches – regresses back to last year's levels, things could get ugly here, since he remains a mostly mediocre control pitcher.

But we're going on nearly 200 innings across the past two seasons of Abbott posted exceptional quality of contact allowed metrics – among pitchers who have thrown at least 2,500 pitches since the start of last season, Abbott ranks 14th out of 108 in expected wOBA on contact – so I don't think that's just a fluke. He'll allow the random homer, but he generally produces weakly hit fly balls with little chance of becoming hits, which helps keep his BABIP abnormally low. 

He's a pitcher who defies convention in a lot of ways, and 15 years ago, during the height of the FIP-driven pitching analysis revolution, he probably would have been dismissed as a fluke. But we know he does a great job of consistently limiting damage on contact, and if his strikeout rate remains in the high-20s – it was 26% in 2023, collapsed to 19.5% last season, and is up to 28.2% to date in 2025 – he's going to remain a very good pitcher. Even after Wednesday, I believe that's what he is, despite my past skepticism.