It’s been clear for the past month, at least, that something is eating at Bryce Miller. Coming off a strong season last year and a sterling spring, Miller was primed for a huge season in 2025. Those dreams have come crashing down since the start of the season, however, as he’s struggled time after time to get through his starts, eventually landing on the IL with elbow inflammation. Miller seems optimistic that the cortisone shot he received and a two-week layoff will help him bounce back to the player he was last season. But for Miller, he has to heal more than just physically: the mental side of his game has taken a thrashing along with his ERA.

Last Sunday’s loss, completing a series sweep for the Blue Jays, wasn’t the worst Miller has pitched this season, despite the box score. For four innings, Miller looked like his old self. He attacked the zone, throwing a ton of first-pitch strikes, which he’s done a good job of this year at home – less so on the road. He didn’t let a tough-luck run in the second inning, where a couple of ground balls that found holes culminated in an early run for the Blue Jays, snowball into a worse situation; same thing in the fourth, when Alejandro Kirk did his whole thing and karate-chopped at a two-strike fastball well up and out of the zone for a bad-luck double that would also eventually come around to score.

But the snowball eventually found Miller in the fifth, with the Blue Jays damaging him for three more runs, all with two outs. The big blow came from a George Springer home run on a center-cut 92.7 mph fastball that’s maybe the worst pitch I’ve ever seen Miller throw, but the trouble started before that, with a single in a 3-0 count to Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and a full-count walk to Addison Barger. That’s been a theme of Miller’s 2025 so far: his inability to put hitters away with two strikes, and, more troubling, his inability to close up an inning with two outs—all of it a stark contrast from the Miller of a year ago.

With runners in scoring position, it’s even worse:

Small sample size, of course—that SLG percentage jumped a hundred points after Sunday’s game—but it’s a stark change from Miller of last year, who treated two outs like that was the end of the inning for the opposing team. Miller is getting hit hard more than he was last year in clutch situations, but he’s also been getting on-based to death because of his lack of command leading to more walks.

More evidence for Miller’s mental struggles comes from staff writer Zach Mason, who points out that last year in two-strike counts, Bryce went to his four-seamer, as he has this year, about a third of the time. While last year that resulted in a strikeout 20% of the time, this year it’s down to 11%, while his splitter and curveball, the other two pitches he uses in two-strike counts, are holding steady as far as strikeouts and whiffs go.

However, in non-two strike counts, although he’s throwing more balls with the fastball than he did last season—part of his overall command problems—the numbers aren’t as significantly different as they are in his two-strike counts.

The heater, once ol’ reliable for Miller, is both suffering a command outage and, seemingly, a conviction outage.

Miller’s continued comments about dealing with nagging soreness and generally “not feeling good” eventually led to an IL stint to attend to an inflamed elbow, which came as no surprise to those who had been watching Miller’s velocity steadily trend downwards this season. Manager Dan Wilson downplayed Miller’s dip in velocity, saying it tends to happen when you get up near the 100-pitch mark. And while it’s true Miller sees his velo dip a tick or two during games, in 2024 he started at a slightly higher average velocity on his fastballs—he’s been down almost a full tick on his four-seamer, and half a tick on his sinker (although his cutter is actually up, on average)—giving him more wiggle room for a velo dip later. Actually, in digging into his numbers from last year, Miller’s velocity held firm when he was cruising, as he was against the White Sox in a seven-inning effort on June 12: he was still hitting 94-95 at pitch number 90 and above. By contrast, in a grueling effort June 7 against the Royals in a game Kansas City wound up walking off 10-9, Miller was more 93-94 in the sixth inning at pitch 80+.

“In the past, it felt like I could get through six innings in a breeze, I feel as good as I do in the sixth as I did in the first,” said Miller after his outing Sunday. “And it’s been a struggle to have that feeling so far. It’s been an uphill battle as the game goes on to feel fresh and ready to go.”

The messaging from his manager, though, has been more about a necessary change in mindset. “That’s obviously tough, when you don’t feel the way you normally do,” said Wilson after Sunday’s loss. “But I think some good positives can be drawn…he was around the zone more, he attacked the zone more, I thought his secondaries were much better. So he’s finding ways. Mentally, when you don’t feel good about where you are, I feel like his change yesterday to attack more was a good start, and he’ll hopefully continue along that path.” –

Miller agreed that he had been focusing on changing his mental state.

“Going into this week I wanted to change mentality and get back to pitching the way I have in the past, attacking with the heater, getting ahead and attacking today. I feel like I did that today…Score aside, that was the best I’ve thrown and the best fastball command I’ve had.”

“I felt decent, body-wise, but the mentality change was the main thing I was focusing on. This game is really, really mental, and especially when you’re struggling, it’s hard to stay off your heels. And I think the past few weeks, I’ve been pitching on my heels from the get go. So hopefully we can get feeling better and get some confidence back feeling better body-wise.”

“Decent” isn’t how you want one of your starters describing their health, and sure enough, Miller hit the IL shortly after these comments. The hope is that Miller’s physical rest will also grant him some mental rest where he can get off his heels literally and metaphorically, and hopefully have some time to make that mental adjustment and find some more command. In the images below, the left side is 2024—you can see how consistent Miller was to his spot. The right side, with its scattered amorphous blob, is 2025.

And here are the sliders from 2024 and 2025, respectively. That’s not an ideal location for where a slider should end up.

Aside from solving his physical ailments, Miller also has to fix his mentality during his down time, starting with his approach with runners on.

“I was telling [Pete Woodworth] the other day, last year, runners on with two outs, or any time really, didn’t bother me. I think I had one of the higher left on base percentages last year because I would just continue to attack, bases loaded, one out, no outs, two outs, whatever, I was able to execute. And I’m not doubting my stuff or anything like that—I know my stuff is still good even when I’m not feeling good—but that kind of leads back to the pitching on my heels stuff. I think the last few games, whenever I get runners on, instead of being like whatever, it doesn’t matter I’m just going to attack the hitter, it’s been more thoughts of don’t let that guy score, I’ve got to keep runs off the board and string together innings, and then something happens, or it doesn’t happen, and it kind of snowballs.

There’s a lot going on in this game besides just making a pitch. It’s an extremely mental game, and we’re going through it right now, but we’ll get it figured out.”