Abner Uribe taught himself English by listening to rap. Next, he wants to master command of the strike zone.

PHOENIX – Within the first week of pitchers and catchers reporting to the team’s complex in Arizona for spring training, the Milwaukee Brewers posted a video of a player asking teammates lighthearted questions.

How long does it take for you to do your morning routine before coming to work? What’s your focus during your throwing program?

Nothing unwonted, right?

Think again.

At the end of the video, the interviewer, Brewers flamethrowing reliever Abner Uribe, turned toward the camera with a grin and exclaimed.

“What English!”

It was a notable step for the 23-year-old right-hander from the Dominican Republic, taking the microphone and being filmed asking questions in his second language to be put out on all the team’s official social media channels.

It’s also yet another sign that one of the most electric arms in baseball is growing more and more comfortable in the big leagues, where within the Brewers clubhouse many see him as the closer of the future.

Uribe has gained comfortability with his second language and in his place in the majors

Major-league teams supply resources for young, Spanish-speaking prospects to learn English as they come up through the farm system. For the Brewers that includes classes at the team’s Dominican academy as well as people to help with lessons at their complex in Phoenix.

But that wasn’t Uribe’s optimal learning style, he says.

“I’m not a good student for taking classes,” he noted Thursday from the Brewers clubhouse. “When I’m chilling and too quiet, I fall asleep. I fall asleep in class. I have to be moving and active. I don’t like learning in class.”

Big-leaguers aren’t – and shouldn’t be – required or pressured to do interviews with media in English. Teams provide interpreters for that reason, so that players can feel comfortable speaking in whatever language they prefer.

Uribe, it was clear from not long after he signed, was destined for the majors thanks to his arm that could easily hit triple-digit velocity. He didn’t need to learn to speak English, but he wanted to. Doing so would allow him to communicate seamlessly all across the clubhouse as well as speak entirely for himself in interviews, he thought.

Uribe’s informal lessons started in the car with Charlie Greene, a current big-league coach with Milwaukee who at the time was a minor-league instructor.

“When I gave him rides home, he was the DJ,” Greene said. “He got to pick the music. But he would also pick songs in English.”

Uribe would spin mostly rap.  He memorized the lyrics. Greene would explain what certain words were when Uribe would hear them across multiple songs but didn’t know the meaning. Eventually, with the help of Lil Baby and Drake – the two artists he would play the most on his rides with Greene – Uribe began picking up conversational English.

“It’s that kind of English that I copied,” Uribe said. “I would try to understand, ‘What are they saying?’ and that helped me a lot.”

Uribe isn’t the first baseball player to pick up a second language by consuming English content. Brewers infielder Andruw Monasterio, a native of Venezuela who speaks fluent English, supplemented his learning of the language with music and movies with subtitles.

“Everything sounds the same,” Monasterio said of the greatest challenge for a non-native speaker trying to learn English in a baseball environment. “In English, so many words sound the same. If you say, ‘Loan,’ to me it sounds like ‘Lung.’ That ‘s the hardest thing. What’s easy is songs or TV. That’s the way I learn English and a lot of us learn English.”

Uribe pitches with fire, both from his right arm and his emotions

Even last year, when he made his MLB debut, Uribe was understandably hesitant to conduct interviews in English, opting to utilize the team translator.

But behind the scenes, in little conversations with Devin Williams and Bryse Wilson, there were traces of Uribe cracking jokes in English.

“I try every day,” Uribe said. “I try to keep getting better, try to learn something in English every day. I think I can speak it pretty good now and my teammates are always going to help me.”

And Uribe loved Wilson’s entrance song: “God’s Gonna Cut You Down” by Johnny Cash.

“I like country music too,” he said. “If they put on country music, I don’t know the artist but I know the songs. I like it. I like (Wilson’s) walk-up song.”

Uribe was joking the other day with a bullpen mate about how he fashions himself a bit as a cowboy – un vaquero. He is even considering using country as his entrance music to blast over the speakers at American Family Field before he hurls 102 mph sinkers.

This is just how smoothly Uribe fits in the clubhouse as a 23-year-old with all of 30 big-league innings to his name. He throws like a bona fide major-league pitcher and carries himself like one.

The last part is just as important as the first. Uribe is by nature a highly emotional player. “Me gusta divertirme,” Uribe said when he was first called up to Milwaukee.

I like to have fun.

In the minor leagues, though, it occasionally got the most of Uribe. In a game last June with Class AA Biloxi, Uribe – after recording the final out of a game – got ejected for walking toward an umpire and shouting as he and the umpire walked off the field.

And, as Uribe walked off the field following the final out in his debut last July, he did his standard celebration of putting an imaginary pistol in its holster on his hip.

A couple veterans on the Brewers told him to tamper down the celebration moving forward. They understood the emotion of the moment, Uribe said, but maybe put the guns away as a rookie, they passed along.

Now, after recording a 1.76 earned run average in his rookie campaign, it’s all about consistently channeling emotion in a way that enhances his pitching for Uribe, his manager believes.

“Some guys act like they’re a tough guy,” manager Pat Murphy said. “When I was a kid, I had older brothers. So we were involved in a lot of physical stuff and people thought I was tough. But just because someone perceives you as tough doesn’t make you tough.

“Everybody can access toughness. That's what this is about, mental toughness. And Abner has it, for sure. But like everyone else, there's bouts of thinking you can get by without it. So it's all about accessing it. Hoby Milner, does he present himself as tough? No. But he is, I promise you – because he knows how to access it.

“I’m certain Abner has it and accesses it often. But not always.”

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The Brewers are envisioning a critical role for Uribe this season

Accessing raw emotion is different than accessing true toughness. That’s one of the many lessons Murphy has learned from a lifetime in the game, and one the Brewers hope Uribe learns heading into 2024.

Uribe knows full and well what the other key is ahead of his sophomore campaign.

“My command,” Uribe rattled off when asked what his main focus is this spring.

Said Murphy: “The key thing: he's got to put that ball where wants it.”

When Uribe is locating, he’s purely unhittable. His fastball velocity is in the 100th percentile among all MLB pitchers. His fastball, as outfielder Joey Wiemer describes it, “has f*** you written all over it.” His slider carried an unthinkable 58% whiff rate last year. And, batters beware, he’s working on a cutter this spring.

To hone his command, Uribe is working closely with Brewers coaches, especially pitching coach Chris Hook and bullpen coach Jim Henderson, to make his mechanics more repeatable.

“I think I’m working most on the positions with my mechanics that are going to help me,” Uribe said. “I’m putting the work in on that every day. Last year was good. It was amazing for me. So if I can do that again this year and throw more strikes, it will be only good things.”

Murphy doesn’t look at Uribe and see a defined seventh- or eighth-inning guy. What he sees is a bazooka-armed, fiery competitor who dominates right-handed hitters but can fit into any leverage situation.

“I think what happens with guys like that is that he's dominant versus righties, right?” Murphys aid. “And so now against lefties, it's been a little of an adjustment. Then you kind of look at the end of the game, you look at where's a spot in the game where you're going to see a few more righties and maybe this kid can get three-plus outs? Sometimes you can't do that and just gotta go with it. But rigid roles? I don’t think it’s smart.”

Expect Uribe to be called upon to put out fires for Murphy and the Brewers early and often in 2024. And when Uribe puts out the fires, there may just be a pistol, still smoking from the 100 mph heat it just unleashed, that gets put back in its holster.

“Maybe,” Uribe said. “A couple times. We’ll see.”

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Brewers Abner Uribe wants to master command to become elite reliever