SAN DIEGO — He had tried everything, even switching his slider grip without telling anyone. Houston Astros coaches caught it on Edgertronic cameras, corrected the error and convinced Bryan Abreu to stop seeking radical solutions to his struggles. “We don’t need to reinvent the wheel,” assistant pitching coach Ethan Katz told him.So Abreu settled for a more subtle adjustment.Amid the worst stretch of his eight major-league seasons, Abreu pulled up his pants and began to wear high socks. He did it at some point earlier in his Astros career, before he blossomed into one of baseball’s most dominant relievers. Bringing it back became a last-ditch effort to remain one.“Feeling something new with the uniform,” Abreu said, “that definitely helps a lot to make me feel like I’m reset.”Crediting high socks for a comeback is crazy, but this is baseball, a sport synonymous with superstitions that have little rhyme or reason. At his lowest point, Abreu said he “just had to switch” and try something — anything — to start anew. He exited April with a 12.54 ERA and no defined role in Houston’s bullpen or on its active roster.“We can’t fix the past, but we can change the future,” Abreu said last week. “Everything that I’ve been doing was in the wrong direction, so we have to make something different so the future can come in the best way.”Abreu carried that attitude across the most calamitous time of his career. Overcoming it has helped pilot Houston atop the American League West while resurrecting Abreu from the abyss.Abreu has a 1.93 ERA since May 3, a stretch of 34 appearances that has saved his season and, perhaps, his standing as one of the best available relievers in next winter’s free-agent market.“He’s a hard worker, not satisfied with mediocrity and wanting to be the best he can be,” closer Josh Hader said. “That’s a guy you want by your side no matter what. If you have a guy like that, it feeds the fire with everybody around.”Abreu’s comeback coincided with Hader’s return from the injured list on June 2. Since that day, only the resurgent Boston Red Sox have a lower bullpen ERA than the Astros. Abreu and Hader have morphed back into the menacing, late-game duo Houston envisioned in spring training. The setup man and closer have combined to allow just nine earned runs across their past 48 2/3 innings.Abreu allowed 13 earned runs in his first 11 appearances alone. The collapse ceded leverage innings to less experienced relievers and left Abreu to confront the first significant failure of his major-league career. “That can destroy you,” southpaw Steven Okert said. “You never know if they’re ever going to get back to normal or their previous self.”“Some people who haven’t seen the struggles, it makes it harder. You don’t know how to deal with it.”How Abreu handled it impressed those around this affable, 29-year-old right-hander, who has more riding on this season than most. This winter, Abreu is scheduled to reach free agency, where generational wealth may await. From 2022 to 2025, only four relievers were worth more wins above replacement than Abreu, according to FanGraphs: Griffin Jax, Emmanuel Clase, Edwin Diaz and Devin Williams.Diaz and Williams have each signed free-agent contracts worth at least $48 million. Abreu does not have the closing experience of either man but matches both in performance and dominance. Paying Abreu something similar didn’t seem ludicrous, but his performance in March and April put that thought in serious peril.“I never saw him once go, ‘Oh my God, I’m going to be a free agent,’” Katz said. “All the stuff that can really derail guys, I never thought he was thinking about those things, even though he probably was. He never let that show.“We had some conversations to really let him know, ‘We’re going to get you back there, and we need you. If this team is going to go and this bullpen is going to go, we need to get the Bryan Abreu that’s always been there.’”Doing so started with showing Abreu that version of him still existed. It is why coaches intervened when Abreu attempted to alter the grip on his signature slider. Reversing this spiral didn’t require a total overhaul, just tweaks to troubling trends that had begun to present themselves.Abreu walked 16 batters in his first 11 1/3 innings. Flying open in his delivery left him misfiring with fastballs to his arm-side: up and in against right-handed hitters and away against lefties. Pitchers often get defects in their deliveries, but the way Abreu trains isn’t conducive to fixing it. He likes to throw — a lot — and most of it is on flat ground.Katz and pitching coach Josh Miller believed it would be more beneficial for Abreu to abandon that routine and do all of his pregame work on the bullpen mound. Simulating a more game-like scenario would help Abreu feel the flaws — and fixes — in his delivery. Coaches put a stand-in dummy in the left-handed batter’s box, too, allowing Abreu to work on his pitch sequencing while implementing the adjustments in his delivery.“That’s been the biggest part of getting him back on track,” Katz said.The introduction of the ABS system shifted how hitters were approaching Abreu, a reliever who has always relied on chase more than command. Players around the sport are swinging less with the challenge system in place, putting Abreu in a bind.Abreu threw just 51.7 percent of his pitches for strikes in April while generating a 20.4 percent chase rate. Abreu’s career chase rate is 27.8 percent. To throw more strikes, Abreu sacrificed some of his fastball velocity. His four-seam fastball averaged 95.1 mph in April and 94.4 mph in May. It sat 97.3 mph last season.At the suggestion of Houston’s pitching coaches, Abreu introduced a cutter to come back inside the strike zone. It is a variation of his four-seam fastball and something that, according to Abreu, he has “the freedom to grab it and throw it through the strike zone.” Abreu’s teammate and close friend, Cristian Javier, is also experimenting with one.“It’s a pitch that guys really trust in the zone really well, and it’s been a great add,” Katz said. “It’s kind of opened up everything.”Abreu threw his first cutter in a June 2 outing against the Pittsburgh Pirates. In 23 appearances since, Abreu is throwing 63.6 percent of his pitches for strikes. He’s walked just eight batters across those 23 2/3 innings, during which Abreu’s four-seam fastball velocity has inched upward. He averaged 96.1 mph in both July and August.After touching 99.1 mph in an outing this weekend against the San Diego Padres, Abreu gave a wide smile before saying, “It’s about time.”“It’s the feeling that I’ve been looking for the whole season,” Abreu said. “To be able to have it, help the team, move forward and be able to go out there and compete, that’s an amazing feeling.”Abreu is one of the most pleasant people in Houston’s clubhouse. That he maintained his disposition amid a disaster is of little surprise, but still impressive to a slew of veterans who wondered whether they would have been able to do so. Okert called it “incredible to watch him never get too down on himself.”“The person never changed,” Katz said. “He’s always been a really good teammate. Guys look up to him, the way he goes about his business and I think everybody was pulling for him to get through this. Everybody has had his back and, with that, he felt the love, care and all that kind of stuff to be able to accelerate this process.”