Why, then, is his deal with the Chicago Cubs for just one year and $3.75 million? It’s because he’s an extreme lefty specialist, and that skill set generally comes with a limited market. Milner isn’t a traditional late-inning reliever, a matchup-proof flamethrower. He has enormous platoon splits, triple the league average for lefty pitchers over a fairly substantial sample. It’s for exactly the reason you’d expect: Milner throws sidearm and with little velocity, relying on a sweeper that he throws nearly half the time against lefties to tie them into knots.
Against righties, he has no plus options, so he mixes his bread-and-butter sinker/sweeper with a so-so four-seamer/changeup combination to at least give them a few things to think about. That plan does not work particularly well. Righties slugged .445 against him in 2025, and that’s actually lower than his career mark. That means that he resorts to walking them quite frequently rather than giving in. In his career, he has sported a 4.7% walk rate against lefties, verifiably elite, and an 8% mark against righties. He walked more than 10% of the righties he faced in 2025, in fact.