CINCINNATI — Milwaukee Brewers reliever Bennett Sousa was a senior at the University of Virginia in the fall of 2017 when he saw a freshman from the southern part of the state show up on campus acting anything like a freshman.

The guy didn’t look like anything special. Listed at 6 feet, but his real height likely rounded up to the whole number. His body, well, it didn’t scream top-tier athlete. His attitude, though, was not one of someone intimidated by the 6-foot-3 Sousa or anyone else on a Cavaliers’ team that still had some players who had won the national championship in 2015.

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“He walked into the building and he was very confident, short little guy and you’re like ‘who the hell is this guy?” Sousa recalled Monday afternoon. “If you walk in the locker room that way, you better be pretty good.”

Sousa and his Cavaliers teammates learned as quickly as Sousa’s Brewers teammates that Abbott has reason to be as confident as he looked then when he stepped on the mound for his big-league debut Monday at Great American Ball Park.

Abbott, four days out from celebrating his 24th birthday, held the Brewers to just one hit over six scoreless innings on Monday, earning the win in the team’s 2-0 victory. Abbott struck out six and walked four.

If there was a difference between the guy Sousa met back in 2017 and the one on the mound Monday, it was the mustache Abbott now sports.

“We would’ve made so much fun of him for that, we would’ve ripped him for that,” Sousa said. “But it’s his thing now.”

A second-round pick by the Reds in the 2021 draft, Abbott’s bulldog mentality was clear to Reds scout Jeff Brookens right away. It was Brookens, who died last year, who said to look beyond those physical attributes and look at what the left-hander had done at UVa. He was a competitor and an advanced pitcher. He could help the Reds and help them quickly.

That wasn’t a message that Brookens delivered just in 2021; technically, he was repeating himself that year. The year before, when Abbott had been a junior at UVa and a reliever, Brookens pushed for the Reds to take Abbott in that five-round draft, but Abbott went undrafted and switched from the bullpen to the rotation as a senior.

Abbott rose through the Reds’ minor leagues, appearing in the Futures Game last year and then returning to where he ended last year, Double A, before his performance there after three starts made it obvious he was ready for another challenge. After seven starts in Triple A, the big leagues were the next frontier.

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Whether at UVa or in the minor leagues, Abbott did the same thing he’s done pretty much his entire life. He pitched. He challenged hitters and he struck out batters. He was the first Reds pitcher to throw six scoreless innings or more with one or fewer hits in his debut since the mound was moved to 60 feet, six inches in 1893.

Abbott’s line looked sterling, but he did walk three batters in the first two innings and needed 53 pitches to get through those two frames. He struck out Christian Yelich to end the first and then walked the first two batters of the second before getting Rowdy Tellez to fly out for the first out. That did, however, move a runner to third. Abbott responded with a pair of strikeouts to end the inning.

“I think early on it took him an inning or two to settle in,” Reds manager David Bell said. “If you’re human, that’s very normal, so I was glad to actually see that and his ability to lock it back in was really impressive.”

In the stands during the bottom of the second, Reds sideline reporter Jim Day interviewed Abbott’s parents, Jeanette and David Abbott.

“He’s nibbling a little too much,” David Abbott told Day during the second inning, while wearing a Reds hat he purchased on a family trip to Great American Ball Park when Abbott was about 8 or 9 years old. “I think he needs to concentrate on pitching to contact instead of trying to nibble at the corners. Just settle down. He’ll do it. You’ll see a different inning next inning.”

That next inning? Against the top of the Brewers’ order, Abbott got two groundouts and a flyout. More importantly, he did it in eight pitches. He needed just 11 pitches to get through the fourth, with two groundouts and a strikeout.

When David Abbott’s comments were relayed to his son, Andrew laughed.

“That sounds like him. He was not (wrong),” Andrew Abbott said. “I personally don’t like the four walks. I know it’s a tough stat. The game overall was good but the four walks are like my personal … I’ve got to be better than that for the team.”

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It’s hard to think he can be, but catcher Luke Maile backed him up.

As reporters headed to Maile’s locker to talk to him after the game, he yelled out at Abbott, “Hey Abbott! I’m honest when I do interviews. You may not want to read this tomorrow.”

Abbott laughed, as did Maile. That said, he noted that it wasn’t all platitudes.

“His stuff is really good. He’ll get away with a lot of stuff over the course of his career, no question,” Maile said. “This is a better level and everything, but the minor leagues showed that, right? He has been dominant, pretty much telling people that the heater was coming and getting away with it. He did that a bit tonight too. He makes adjustments quick. There’s a lot of great takeaways, but there’s a next level to his game that he hasn’t found yet. Hopefully we get there.”

Abbott was able to get through five innings with just 84 pitches thrown. He walked the leadoff man, Andruw Monasterio, in the sixth but came back to strike out William Contreras looking at a 3-2 curveball that clipped the bottom of the zone.

With Buck Farmer warming up in the bullpen, he faced Yelich for the third time. After a strikeout out in the first for Abbott’s first career punch out, Yelich grounded out to first in the fourth. Now with a runner on, Yelich fouled off the first five pitches he saw — three four-seam fastballs and a pair of sweepers. Abbott’s sixth pitch of the at-bat to Yelich, and 101st of the night, was a 93-mph fastball that Yelich swung through for the second out of the inning.

“The Yelich fastball was my favorite pitch. He had to throw it right there,” Maile said. “It was a super-dangerous hitter who had seen a lot of pitches and was fouling them off the right way. He wasn’t rolling them over. He was seeing them pretty good, short and quick. We had a bit of space on the outer half. At the same time, there’s not a lot of margin for error when you do that after they’ve seen so many of them, especially a hitter like him. He just drilled the glove. It was the one pitch that stuck out where you could have stuck the mitt out on a fungo and he would have hit it. It was an impressive pitch.”

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Bell said it was a difficult decision to keep him in to face the right-handed-hitting Brian Anderson, who had walked and struck out looking in his first two at-bats.

“When I was a reliever, I know what the feeling is when you kind of know when the coach is going to make the move,” Abbott said. “I wanted to leave under my own power as much as possible. I’m just (grateful) that they had enough trust in me to just ride it out.”

Bell said he wanted to let Abbott end on a good note, but also win the game. Anderson was the tying run and one swing of the bat could switch Abbott’s debut from a triumph to a no-decision.

Anderson took a first-pitch curveball for a ball before he swung and missed at a fastball up out of the zone and then at a changeup at the bottom of the zone. The 105th pitch Abbott threw was a four-seam fastball up and on the outer third of the plate. Anderson served it softly into right field.

“He showed that he was able to get guys out and his stuff looked great,” Bell said. “He was up over 100 pitches, I think the most he’s thrown is 97, 98 this year. But really big out right there. Of course I want his night to end well and we’re trying to win the game, but he was able to get that out and do both.”

Among the people Abbott met with after the game — including his parents —was Sousa, who had texted him this morning saying, “I hope we kick your ass tonight.”

The word “hope” was doing a lot of work there. Sousa knew just what the Brewers were facing and what kind of pitcher they’d see. He’d seen it before. Abbott may not look like a dominant starter, but he pitches like one.

“He’s always been that bulldog type of pitcher,” Sousa said. “His stuff has gotten better, but it’s always been that confidence that has carried him.”

And that’s why he’s here now.

“He’s been impressive since he’s been in our organization and now he’s getting an opportunity to pitch here,” Bell said. “We wouldn’t have brought him up if we didn’t think he had a real shot to stay with us and keep getting opportunities and tonight was a great start.”

(Photo: Dylan Buell / Getty Images)