“I was commanding the sweeper fine, I only had three walks, but it would be like 0-2, 1-2, and I’d throw the sweeper and it would be an end-of-the-bat infield hit. “I was throwing a lot of sliders, and working on the new one,” he said. In fact, he was throwing this newly acquired sweeper a lot in the minors, and it helped lead to some of his weird results down in Double A this year. “The sweeper is so big these days, I figured I’d try it,” said Miller in Oakland. There’s some confusion around Miller’s other two breaking balls, as Baseball Savant has one more pitch called a sweeper, but Miller referred to it as a curve most often, because his true sweeper is one that he’ll break out more in the future. So that’s another pitch that may not look super impressive to the eye but should perform well for Miller. It’s typically easier to command and easier to throw harder, and at 86 mph, Miller’s version is above that 85 mph threshold - it’s hard to throw a bad slider once you’re past 85.Īt 80 you have to have a very good profile in order to rate above ML average.Īlmost no way to throw a bad breaking ball harder than 85.Ĭharts Via Edge /mnLeECJq5F The gyro slider is a tight, bullet spin slider that doesn’t turn all that spin into movement. I asked Mariners pitcher Bryce Miller about his two sliders. I didn’t throw the third one yesterday, it’s a sweeper, I didn’t throw it. “I’m throwing three sliders,” Miller said after his first start in Oakland. The work he’s put in with Mariners coaches has been to develop an arsenal that fits around that fastball. They loved the makeup, the 99-mph fastball and saw a pitcher who had a big upside. But it did nothing to scare the Mariners away at all. That spring didn’t go as planned for Miller, who had a 4.45 ERA and also missed time with COVID-19.
So how did this guy slip to the fourth round in 2021? The Mariners actually wanted to select Miller during the pandemic-shortened 2020 draft, though he indicated he wanted to return to Texas A&M. In fact, Miller is in rare company already with top-five Stuff+ for all starters, right there among Jacob deGrom, Shohei Ohtani, Spencer Strider and Hunter Greene. That velocity and movement has pushed Miller’s fastball into the top five by Stuff+, a metric that looks only at the physical characteristics of a pitch. It may not look impressive - ride is often hard to see with the naked eye unless you’re behind the plate - but the fact that Langeliers was under the pitch is a clue that the ball appeared higher at the plate than he expected, which is what ride does. “I’ve never thrown that much vert,” Miller said with a smile. Only one starter with at least 10 innings this year has more vertical movement on his fastball, and it’s possible there’s more in there because it’s something that the righty works on. With his over-the-top release, Miller already stands at the top of the ride leaderboards. Miller will make his third big-league start Saturday on the road against the Tigers. You see it (coming) to the middle of the plate, but it ends up at your chest or at your head. “It just never comes down,” Raleigh told The Athletic. Why is it so hard to hit Miller, and in particular his riding fastball? Ask his catcher, Cal Raleigh.
I think the sky’s the limit for this guy.” “What that does is it widens out the plate and makes it that much easier as you go through the lineup a second, third time.
But he has no problem getting that in there.” You see that from veteran pitchers who are comfortable pitching inside. “(I was) super impressed with the command of it … he threw a lot of really good fastballs on the inside part of the plate,” Servais said. That, Servais said, stood out the most Sunday. Fastballs at the top rail, but then also heaters that were spotted on the inside and outside corners.
Sixty of Miller’s 85 pitches in the game were fastballs. “I have to say, we’ve gotten spoiled with Logan and George recently … but what Bryce Miller has added to our rotation has been awesome,” said Mariners manager Scott Servais.Īfter his stunning debut last week against the A’s, Miller followed that up on Sunday with six scoreless innings, allowing two hits and one walk against a much better fastball-hitting team in the Astros. It’s fair to say that Gilbert and Kirby are rotation anchors, and Miller might be on his way. Kirby turned 25 in February and Miller, who is the baby of the group, won’t turn 25 until August.
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