Full disclosure: Bryce Miller is one of my favorite Mariners, both on the field and off. In interviews, he’s funny, thoughtful, reflective, insightful; as a player, I’ve enjoyed studying his emerging and evolving pitch arsenal and writing about it. After the 2024 season, Miller was my preseason pick to earn an All-Star nod and even earn downballot Cy Young votes.
Obviously, that didn’t happen. Miller’s 2025 was haunted by a nagging elbow issue that caused him to miss the back half of May and then, when initial treatment didn’t resolve the issue, knocked him out from June until late August. Health problems reared their head again this spring when Miller missed the opening of the sesaon with an oblique strain. Since returning, it’s been another maddeningly inconsistent season for Miller, but August was been consistently terrible for him – he gave up a combined 21 runs over four starts, and the Mariners didn’t win a single one of his starts that month, which included the brutal back-to-back slate of the 22-0 loss at the Brewers and the 19-2 loss against the Cubs.
The Mariners have tried to move Miller into a bullpen role twice, first putting him into a piggyback role with Luis Castillo, then moving him to the bullpen after the promotion of Kade Anderson. But neither turn stuck; the Mariners shipped off Castillo at the trade deadline, and Emerson Hancock’s adductor strain occurred before Miller could make a single appearance out of the bullpen.
It’s not easy to lose your job, and Miller is staring down the possibility of losing his place in the starting rotation – the only thing he’s known since being drafted by the Mariners five years ago. At the highest level of the sport, it’s hard enough to make adjustments on the fly; it’s even harder to do so while fighting for your job, and by extension, part of your identity. But in order to try to get his season back on track, Miller might have wandered further afield from his best self.
Miller has been susceptible to left-handed hitters his whole career; even in his best season, 2024, lefties slugged about a hundred points higher against him, .389. To counteract that, Miller added a splitter and a cutter to his arsenal to use as weapons against lefties. The splitter has evolved into a foundational part of Miller’s arsenal, capable of getting both lefties and righties out; it’s his second-most used pitch. Miller’s also been using the cutter more frequently to try to steal strikes, especially against lefties early in counts, but the cutter carries with it an intense amount of risk. It has produced his highest whiff rate of the season, at over 35%, but at a cost: when hitters do make contact with the pitch, they absolutely tattoo it: hitters are batting over .350 against the pitch and slugging .882 on it (against a .567 xSLG). Miller doesn’t throw the pitch that often, only about 6% of the time,
But the biggest problem with the cutter is that every time Miller is throwing it, that’s a time he’s not throwing the fastball. Miller says himself that his identity is as a fastball-forward pitcher, and specifically, the fastball at the top rail, where the pitch plays best.
But multiple times this season Miller’s fastball has landed low in the zone, coming in with almost a traditional sinker shape. In his last outing against Texas, where he got roughed up for four runs in just 3.2 innings pitched, Miller’s fastball command was spotty: sometimes on the top rail, but often winding up well below the zone for noncompetitive misses that led to disadvantage counts.
Postgame, Miller suggested that to be an intentional adjustment, noting that the Rangers lineup had some hitters – notably Jake Burger – who are particularly good at hitting the high fastball. But this might have been a case of over-thinking and over-planning; Miller’s fastball elicited just four whiffs on 23 swings, with hitters only offering at the pitch about half the time.
Miller recognizes that he’s gotten away from his identity somewhat as a fastball-first pitcher, expressing frustration with his performance postgame after his outing against the Rangers that also sums up some season-long frustration.“
“I just got to get back to getting ahead, attack with confidence, with my best stuff, and trust it. That’s the main thing that allows me to have quick at-bats, have quick innings, get deep into games. Shoving fastballs as aggressively as possible.”
And it’s not just leading with the fastball, but the location of the fastball that he recognizes is an issue.
“I’m not a guy that’s going to dot the fastball down and away over and over. Jacob deGrom’s great at that. That’s not what I do. When I try to do that too much, then that leads to – miss an inch here, an inch there, and then you get into bad counts.”
Bad counts have certainly been an issue for Miller lately. His walk rate doubled in his miserable August to an unsustainable 13%, with the chief culprit obviously being the career-high seven walks in the rout against Chicago.
“It’s felt like all of my walks in the last month or month and a half have scored,” Miller said after that outing, “but when you have seven walks, what do you expect? It’s super frustrating.”
Miller admitted after that game that he though he might have been beating himself mentally rather than making the other team earn it against him.
“I’m at my best when I’m going to attack this pitch, give this pitch all I have and not think ahead. And I think that last month I’ve been kind of thinking ahead too much, and thinking of what I need to do to this batter, the next batter, the next inning, to get out of this with a good line and keep us in it. That’s not what I do when I’m at my best. It’s got to be this pitch, this moment, this at-bat, one at-bat at a time, one pitch at a time. So that’s one thing I need to do better.”
It’s an understandable mindset for Miller, who has been fighting for his job at the same time the team’s been fighting for its season, a stressful overlap of which Miller is clearly aware. But it’s one thing to talk about it; it’s another thing to be about it. Miller has always been able to summon his Big Tex persona: the swaggering, confident Texan who is equal parts hat and cattle. He’s been short on the cattle this season, but there’s time yet to get back to his best self – pumping fastballs in the zone, setting the pace and controlling at-bats. Big Tex is still in there somewhere; Bryce just has to find him again.
