Jose Cabrera, Arz (AA) 4/15/25 FQO (Complete Outing — Condensed)

Look­ing at Cabr­era’s career stats is mis­lead­ing. He has not been the same pitch­er since return­ing at the end of last June. Return­ing from what, I am not entire­ly sure. Injury? Cabr­era was put on the restrict­ed list Sep­tem­ber 2023. Was that it? Regard­less, he has had some of the most pro­duc­tive out­ings in the mid-minors since then. Last night was just his sec­ond AA appear­ance and he pulled off some­thing I like to call an FQO (Fan­tas­tic Qual­i­ty Out­ing), which is pitch at least six innings, strike­out at least six, walk no more than two, do not allow a home run, do not allow more than three runs, and have a game WHIP under 1.20. The 2025 sea­son is young, but it shows a short­age of FQOs com­pared to last sea­son. 2024 saw Cabr­era end on a heater in Hills­boro:

I’d be lying if I said I have a great read on Cabr­era’s work. He seems very off any­one’s radar. At least any­one who would pub­licly share some 411. His broad­cast archives aren’t the most telling. Cabr­era’s six (?) pitch mix is more sub­tle to the eyes than most as well. I’m con­fi­dent he throws a four-seam­er, sinker, cut­ter, two break­ing balls, and a change­up. But spot­ting them well is a dif­fer­ent sto­ry. Regard­less, as some­one ros­tered in 0% of leagues and an upper-minors try at hand, I threw him out as my D’Backs arm this off-sea­son (episode 44.) Here’s a lit­tle look from last sea­son:

This is our sec­ond look in a row that we’ve found errors in the box scores’ pitch count. Cabr­era threw 93 pitch­es, 57 for strikes (61%.) You can count along in the bot­tom right cor­ner if you don’t believe me. This was­n’t the most impres­sive FQO I’ve seen, by any stretch. Cabr­era got some nice help from his defense. Cameron Cauley pro­vid­ed half his whiffs on the day. He pitched to a lot of con­tact. Yet, on the oth­er hand, the strike zone seemed to shrink on him at times, and he gave up what you’ll see to be as weak a dou­ble one could. Do we have a real bud­ding 22-year-old SP prospect just get­ting his feet wet in AA or some sys­tem depth an org is try­ing to get as much use out of as they can? Cabr­era’s not a fit­ness super­star, but he has shown the abil­i­ty to go deep into out­ings, often fin­ish­ing them strong­ly. Cabr­era does­n’t give hit­ters many good pitch­es to hit. That may be his strongest attribute.

The one 95 mph fast­ball labeled was the only veloc­i­ty the booth shared with us. I don’t have a ton of con­fi­dence in my thoughts on Cabr­era, but the results have been there in spades late­ly. There are bet­ter broad­cast looks of Cabr­era to come. Let’s see if he keeps giv­ing us rea­sons to watch.

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