Spitting on those expectations, Miller was excellent today. He averaged 97 with his fastball in the first inning and his splitter was splitting to go along with it. He completed the inning in 13 pitches with a pop-up, a strikeout, and a weak ground ball. The strikeout included a middle-middle fastball to Gleybar Torres, and my first thought was, \u201cBoy, he got away with one there.\u201d But then I realized that wasn\u2019t really true. Even down the chute, Torres looked completely overmatched by it. It had been so long since Miller\u2019s fastball looked like this that I forgot just how dominant he can be when he has it.<\/p>\n
Yet Miller has looked good in the first inning several times this year; it\u2019s mostly been later that he\u2019s gotten into trouble. He has an xwOBA of .271 for the first inning this year, which spikes to .385 in the third or later. And most pitchers have a little extra juice in the first inning of a playoff game as the adrenaline shoots through their veins. So it was a beautiful sight to see Miller maintain that velo and the positive results for another three innings. He even touched 98 in the second.<\/p>\n
The closest he came to a jam through his first four innings was a leadoff single from Gleybar Torres in the fourth, struck at 101.5 off the bat. But even then, Josh Naylor cleaned it up with a high-baseball-IQ unassisted double play. Naylor fielded a groundball and Torres retreated back to first. Naylor tagged Torres, ensuring that there was still a force at first base, then stepped on the base to record the second out. If he\u2019d done that in the other order, Torres would have been safe at first. These things seem so basic when you\u2019re watching the game on your couch, but I have seen MLB players mess it up countless times or at least need someone yelling in their ear. I remember similar play from 2019 when Ryon Healy fielded the ball and he said after the game that he was overwhelmed by the moment and was grateful that Dee Strange-Gordon was yelling at him what to do, saying it was as if Dee was controlling him in a video game. Naylor looked cool as a cucumber.<\/p>\n
So Miller made it through four innings and was staked to a 3-0 lead (which we\u2019ll get to). But his velocity was starting to dip just a little, with more 95s and even some 94s. It would have been reasonable to pull him and bring in Emerson Hancock to try to get through a couple more innings. But 94-95 is still OK for Miller, and he had looked good enough to get a chance to keep going. Given the velocity dip and the margin for error, though, I personally would have had him on a first-base-runner-to-reach leash.<\/p>\n
But with 5-6-7 due up, Dan Wilson seemed committed to letting him go through all three before turning things over to the lefty Gabe Speier for Parker Meadows, Javier Baez, and Kerry Carpenter batting at 8-9-1, and I get that thinking. Certainly the leadoff single that Miller allowed to Spencer Torkelson wasn\u2019t particularly alarming because Miller had hit 95.3 in the at-bat, and the splitter Tork hit was on the bottom rail, which he only hit at 76 mph. Miller even got the double-play ball after that, but it was hit too slowly so the defense had to settle for a fielder\u2019s choice. It was the Dillon Dingler double that followed, hit at 109, that would have gotten even the least aggressive manager to pull Miller from the game even if Wilson weren\u2019t already planning on it.<\/p>\n
Overall, however, Miller was excellent, exceeding even my wildest expectations for what he might pull off. Though he was ultimately charged with two runs on four hits while recording just two strikeouts over 4.1 innings, that line does not do credit to the quality of his pitching, even before you consider the low expectations. In a game where a lot went wrong, the player I was most nervous about is the one I hold most blameless for the loss.<\/p>\n
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