Making sense of why Abner Uribe ranks surprising low in this statistic

The Brewers faced a challenging decision as spring training came to an end last month. Their electric young flamethrower, Abner Uribe, was required to serve a four-game suspension for his role in a fight that broke out last season between the Brewers and the Rays. Electing to have Uribe serve his suspension at the beginning of the year would mean that the Brewers would start the season a man down in their bullpen. Additionally, while Uribe's "nastiness" is undeniable, he was coming off a season-ending knee surgery that left his effectiveness in question.

Ultimately, the Brewers chose to carry Uribe on their Opening Day roster, and to this point, the decision looks like an astute one. Uribe has made six appearances out of the pen and surrendered just one run. His success is largely thanks to an improved ability to find the zone. Sure, it's a small sample size, but Uribe has decreased his walk rate from 18.2% in 2024 to just 7.7% this year. With that significant improvement, one would expect Uribe to rank well in any metric related to control, but there's one that seemingly shows a decrease in his ability to locate his pitches.

According to the Location+ metric, Uribe has declined in 2025

As explained by Owen McGratten of FanGraphs.com, Location+ is a metric that measures how effectively a pitcher "hits his spots," taking into account the pitch type and count. McGratten notes that the metric includes an assumption that all pitchers are trying to hit the same spots in certain situations given the pitch they elect to throw, acknowledging some of the imperfections of the statistic.

While it does require a small jump, it's fair to assume that a player who has improved their command is putting the ball where they want, and therefore compiling an above-average score on the Location+ metric. However, Uribe's Location+ has decreased from 101 (slightly above the league average of 100) in 2024 to a shocking 78 in 2025.

So to recap: Uribe is not throwing pitches where they "should be thrown" according to Location+, but he's walking fewer people than ever before. So what does this mean? One possible answer is that Uribe simply trusts his stuff more, and is forcing opposing hitters to try and hit it by consistently staying in the zone. Uribe's decrease in Location+ is paired with an increase in Stuff+, a metric that essentially measures how "nasty" a pitcher is based on the velocity and movement they generate on their pitches. This means that while Uribe may be getting more of the plate on pitches that would rank better for Location+ if they were dotted on the corner, he gets away with it because of the movement and velocity of his lethal sinker/slider combo.

It's not like Uribe's strikeout rate has suffered with this presumably deliberate change. In fact, it's just the opposite: Uribe is striking out opposing hitters at a higher rate than in each of the previous two seasons, speaking to the importance of being around the zone in order to generate poor swings. His strikeout rate jumped from 21.2% last season to 26.9% so far in 2025.

Whether this is an intentional change or not, Uribe has found a new level of success in 2025 and should be encouraged to continue to prioritize filling up the zone as opposed to working the edges. His stuff is more than nasty enough to get away with it.