Article: How Often Does Wilyer Abreu Get His Uniform Dirty?

[Davy Andrews]

I counted every single clean and dirty day, and then I ranked them all on the Abreu Effort Scale. Someone get this guy a laundry detergent sponsorship.

The 2024 season didn’t go how the Red Sox wanted it to go, but it still contained plenty of reasons to tune in each night. Personally, I loved watching Wilyer Abreu. In the field, at the plate, and on the basepaths, Abreu is as high-energy, high-effort a player as you’ll ever see. Even when the Red Sox were getting blown out, you could count on him to give something like 158%. One late-September night during garbage time of a meaningless game, I was watching Abreu, the whole front of his uniform already impregnated with dirt, bust it down the line on a routine groundball, and I started wondering. Between his (presumably) Gold Glove defense and his aggressive baserunning, Abreu always seems to be getting his uniform dirty. It's the ultimate sign of hard-nosed play, and I wondered how often he ends up with that particular badge of honor. So I checked.

Abreu played in 132 games during the 2024 season, and I watched his final plate appearance in every game to check the state of his uniform. I created a 132-row spreadsheet with three columns. The first was binary: Did Abreu finish the game with a clean uniform or not? In the second column, I rated the state of his uniform. A zero meant that it was spotless, while a five could only be achieved by a particularly messy headfirst slide.

I put a brief description in the last column in order to draw takeaways. For example, during 23 different games, you could see evidence of full head-first dives on Abreu’s uniform. In two games, you could see a small stain from pine tar on his left hip. I learned that when he wants to avoid a tag at second base, Abreu will make an extreme, sideways Tokyo Drift dive toward the inside side of the bag that spins him all the way around into the third base line.

Not only that, but this kind of slide has a particular effect on his uniform. Like a car that’s trying to corner in a curve that’s too tight for the speed it’s carrying, Abreu’s momentum causes him to roll over onto his right side. As a result, only that side of his uniform gets dirty, while the left side stays pristine.

I can also tell you that Abreu exhibited the tell-tale dirt stains on his knee and butt that indicate a regular slide into a base on 15 occasions. However, at least two of those slides weren’t into bases, but on the warning track in order make sweet catches like this one.

Abreu also made cool catches in fair territory. On four occasions, his uniform ended up with grass stains. Most of them were from sliding catches, which caused the stains to appear on his knees or his hamstrings, but this was more of an all-out slide that got grass everywhere.

Lastly, there was that one time where Abreu got the back of his uniform slightly dirty. If you’re trying and failing to picture a scenario in which a professional baseball player ends up fully prostrate on the field of play, let me save you some trouble. Abreu got hit by a pitch and, as he dealt with his pain, rolled onto his back in a happy baby yoga pose.

So here are the final numbers. In his 132 games, Abreu got his uniform dirty 44 times, or exactly one-third of the time. When he did get his uniform dirty, he really got it dirty, though. Thirty of the 44 dirty games were threes or higher. On the Abreu Effort Scale, his overall average was 1.1, but he averaged a 3.3 on dirty days.

Dirt Level	0	1	2	3	4	5
Games	88	7	7	8	11	11

It’s possible that I undercounted by a few games. I could have missed a light grass stain, and sometimes his final PA came in the seventh inning, which left a fair amount of time to pick up a stain that I would have missed. Even so, I have to say that I expected Abreu’s uniform to get dirty a bit more often. His longest dirty uniform streak was just four games, all the way back in April. He had streaks of nine and 11 games with an immaculate uniform. Over the nine-game stretch, from May 2-12, he batted .167. That shouldn’t be surprising, though. Generally speaking, players who are getting hits are going to be sliding into bases much more often. A dirty uniform isn’t just a sign of effort, it’s an indicator of solid performance. Maybe that’s why Abreu always ends up so dirty.

 

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