Philip Abner on Arizona Fall League experience, goals for 2025
The Diamondbacks pitching prospect talked about his Arizona Fall League experience, facing Dylan Crews in college, and improving his arsenal.
Diamondbacks' left-hander Philip Abner won’t light up the radar gun, but he's close to reaching the big leagues.
In 2024, he pitched to a 1.85 ERA and 51 strikeouts between Low-A Visalia and High-A Hillsboro. He started his season late, with his first appearance with Visalia on June 14. With two months of lost time, he finished out the year in the Arizona Fall League.
“I loved it,” said Abner. “It’s so good to be around all these great players and being able to show that I can compete with them. I’ve made friends for life here, it’s been unbelievable.”
Abner was selected by the D-backs with their 6th round selection of the 2023 draft out of the University of Florida, the first of 13 consecutive college pitchers. That year, he had to contend with some very tough SEC teams, a conference that has begun dominating the college sports landscape in all major men’s sports.
“I actually am a huge college believer. I think pitching in the SEC helped a ton. Also, it showed me that I had a tough freshman year in college. I failed and had an 8.06 ERA. Just being in college, I was able to learn from that and actually be able to understand what I need to do when I’m struggling.”
Abner was a reliever on the 2023 Florida squad that went to the College World Series Finals. That year's final featured three of the top four picks in the 2023 Draft: Paul Skenes, Dylan Crews, and Wyatt Langford. Ultimately, LSU would sweep Abner and Florida in two games.
Abner shared a fun story of facing Crews in their time in the SEC.
“I remember his family. This was at home at Florida, and his family had the entire suite up there. They’re yelling, loudest people in the ballpark, and I hit him in the knee with a fastball. That was my only at-bat against him.”
Despite averaging close to 90 MPH, and only 11-15 inches of induced vertical break, he gets a lot of swing-and-miss on the pitch due to the purely vertical movement profile (0-2 inches arm-side run).
“I’ve talked to other hitters about my fastball. My fastball doesn’t light up the gun, but for them, it looks above 5 MPH faster than it would a regular 90 MPH fastball. A lot of them look towards our catcher and they’re all confused on what it is.”
The movement profile is very similar to Braves All-Star left-hander Max Fried. Abner’s fastball having similar movement characteristics is merely coincidental, as it’s been the same since high school.
Abner is looking to improve his slider, working on adding velocity to a low-80s slider and altering the shape to be more vertical and less horizontal. He said “it’s only playing well against lefties right now and it’s getting hit a lot”, so he’s hoping for a faster and tighter spinning pitch shape.
He also features a curveball, but it operates at a similar velocity to the slider. He believes the curveball will play better once he increases his slider velocity.
Entering a critical 2025 season, Abner will need to be able to utilize his slider and/or curveball to keep hitters off his fastball. If he can make a successful adjustment next season, he will likely rocket up the system and could be a late-season call-up.
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Michael McDermott
Michael McDermott
