Walbert Ureña Deep Dive
One of my favorite things to do is to look at young pitchers that have the potential to be great, both now and in the future. This is my debut deep dive and I truly hope you learn something from this.
Walbert Ureña - RHP - LAA - 22yoa
Walbert Ureña’s current numbers through 71.2 IP: 3.14 ERA, 69 SO, 1.34 WHIP
Judging by those numbers Walbert Ureña has been a very fine ball player for the Angels. Personally speaking, I have had Ureña since his first few Major League starts, and he has not disappointed me. Ureña is currently on 3 of 4 of my fantasy teams.
Let's dig into the underlying metrics for Ureña. The first thing I usually look at when taking a peak at underlying metrics is xERA (Expected Earned Run Average). Currently Ureña’s xERA is 3.27, this suggests that his ERA is accurate and should hover around 3.00-3.50. Looking deeper, Ureña has a concerningly high SIERA (Skill-Interactive Earned Run Average) at 4.41 (League average is around 4.00). It is important to identify the key differences between xERA and SIERA before continuing. xERA uses metrics like exit velocity and launch angle to decide whether the hitter or pitcher should get rewarded. SIERA does not use exit velocity or launch angle and instead relies much more heavily on strikeouts and walks. Now that you understand the difference between xERA and SIERA we can continue to look deeper into Ureña’s metrics. Ureña holds a 48th percentile K% and a despicable 16th percentile BB% (This explains the stark difference between Ureña’s xERA and his SIERA.) On the other hand Ureña holds a 74th percentile Barrel%, an 80th percentile Hard Hit%, and a lovely 93rd percentile GB% (Ground Ball Percent). Looking at those two groups of statistics we can understand why Ureña’s xERA and SIERA are so different, it’s because he doesn’t strike out a lot of batters, walks a lot of batters, but simultaneously gives up very weak contact. To look even deeper into Ureña we can look at his pitch types. Ureña’s pitch type run values are as follows: Fastball Run Value: -4, Breaking Run Value: 2, Offspead Run Value: 6 (98th percentile). What's clear is that Ureña’s fastballs are very bad, his breaking pitches are good, and his offspead pitches are excellent, let's find out why. Ureña’s fastball velo is definitely not the problem as his fastball velo is ~97.5 (92nd percentile), but the first thing that lets Ureña down is his 18th percentile extension, but many Major League pitchers have had successful careers without velo or extension so everything can’t just be on that. Let's look more deeply into Ureña’s arsenal, but more specifically his arsenal against LHH and RHH. Versus LHH Ureña’s pitch types and percents are as shown: LHH: 27% Sinker, 22% Four-seam, 43% Change, 8% Sweeper. Versus RHH Ureña’s pitch types and percents are as shown: RHH: 38% Sinker, 18% Four-seam, 19% Change, 25% Sweeper. Ureña is a completely different pitcher depending what side of the plate you stand on. If you’re a lefty, you will see a changeup a preposterous 43% of the time and almost all the other times you will see some fastball variation. The numbers definitely show that LHH have an easier time facing Ureña. Versus LHH Ureña has given up 23 walks, versus RHH he has given up just 14 walks (Ureña’s innings pitched against LHH and RHH are virtually identical). I believe that this is a result of left handed hitters realizing that Ureña throws changeups more than any other pitch against them, leading them to taking more pitches and not chasing. This hypothesis is also supported by Ureña’s splits per inning. Ureña has an ERA under 3 in innings 1-4, but an ERA over 7 in inning 5 (I decided not to include innings 6-9 because his innings pitched in those innings are not sufficient.) This could be because Ureña is tired, but I believe that along with Ureña being tired, his low variety pitch mix against different handed hitters leads them to being able to hit Ureña easier the third time through.
All of this evidence leads me to believe that Ureña has a bright future as a Major League Baseball player but needs to develop more depth in his pitch mix, or needs to throw more variety to both handed hitters without getting slammed. Ureña may have a better career as a relief pitcher that is more specialized for RHH but can face the occasional LHH. Talking more about the near future, Ureña’s ERA will probably inflate purely because teams will start stacking their lineups with lefties, leading to Ureña giving up more walks, getting less strikeouts, and giving up more runs. Ureña may not be a good fantasy choice right now but could be in the future particularly as a closer (since his stuff plays better in early innings shown by his 1.38 ERA in the first inning.) or as a starter but only if he develops more variety and doesn’t rely on one pitch.
Another snippet I wanted to mention is that Ureña has a 1.0 player match with 2026 Sandy Alcantara on Baseball Savant and a .91 player match with 2026 Paul Skenes.
Overall, I believe that Ureña has a bright future ahead of him and you should look at him in dynasty leagues or even deeper leagues, say 12 teams or more. This is my first article or whatever you want to call it and I appreciate you for taking time out of your day to read it as it’s definitely not short. I’ll probably post more of these in the future since I have plenty of more pitchers that I can make articles like these on. Anyways, I hope you truly enjoyed this reading and look forward to my next post, see you later and stay sharp!