Cutting-edge cutter
Stumbled upon by accident, the pitch Miley now relies on has extended his career
OAKLAND, Calif. — Wade Miley epitomizes every syllable of the word Southerner, sacrificing suave suits so many major leaguers wear for weathered jeans, camouflage hats and faded Tshirts. He often looks more prepared to patrol a pond or duck blind than a pitcher’s mound.
His twang tinges a clubhouse containing a plethora of personalities. The Astros employ players ranging from low-key to legendary. Miley meanders somewhere in the middle, a veteran with wounds from a winding road here.
“He’s the best,” said Jay Artigues, Miley’s college coach. “What you see is what you get with Wade. He’s as down to earth as they come. He treats the janitors the same way he treats the CEO. He doesn’t treat anybody different.”
Within an organization often commended for its cutting-edge evolution, Miley is a throwback. Pace-of-play pundits rejoice when he starts. Miley averages only 19 seconds between pitches, faster than any other starter in the majors.
He throws one pitch — a cutter — more than 50 percent of the time and dares opponents to diagnose it. In a data-focused sport so fixated on tendencies and deception, Miley’s arsenal is anything but a secret. Teams know precisely what Miley will do and, still, the southpaw succeeds.
“It just must be late,” manager A.J. Hinch said of the pitch. “The hitter reactions are just that it’s late. Everyone knows it’s coming. They’re not surprised by it. They’re ready for it, but it still has some late action and he’s able to locate it.”
Miley’s 3.25 ERA is 12th lowest among American League starters. Only Justin Verlander possesses a lower one among the Astros starters.
Signed on an otherwise nondescript one-year, $4.5 million deal in January, Miley has made himself a mainstay in the middle of an overhauled rotation. His rise is rapid, a cutter-contrived comeback for a man who, two years ago, thought he was done.
“Wade’s approach to baseball is that he wants to win,” reliever Will Harris said. “He’s not going out there to see how many guys he can strike out; he’s not going out there to throw a no-hitter.
“He’s going out there to win the game and, I think, on a winning team that’s a good recipe. We’re set up to win games, so if you have a starting pitcher like him that goes out there with that mentality, I think it’s a good recipe for success for everybody involved.”
Weathering tough times
Wade and Katie Miley considered the end. Reaching rock bottom requires some sort of reassessment, so the couple cautiously planned for a post-baseball life.
“Did we make enough money where we can kind of hang out for a little while?” they thought during the winter of 2017.
Their son, Jeb, was hardly 6 months old. When he was born, Wade dreamed of bringing the boy to a major league clubhouse, allowing him to grow up with remembrance and reverence of the game. If there was any one impetus spurring the southpaw to sustain his career, this was it.
“Wade’s a fighter,” Artigues said. “He has a lot of pride. He told me in the offseason that the next team that gives him a chance, he was going to make the most of it.”
Miley’s competitiveness is contagious and the ability is apparent. Teammates and coaches knew that. Finishing second in National League Rookie of the Year voting and garnering an AllStar appearance in 2012 does not happen by accident.
“I try to go out and bust ass every time I take the ball,” Miley said. “It was tough getting beat down for two straight years. It was hard. The media, the fans, the people. You hear that stuff. I don’t pay much attention to that stuff, I try not to let it bother me, but you hear it. It was embarrassing. It was like ‘I’m this bad.’ ”
Wade lingered as a free agent. Why any team would seek him was a legitimate question. Two terrible seasons in Baltimore ended with a 5.75 ERA.
“I was just scared of the (strike) zone for the most part,” Miley said. “In a way, scared of contact. I’m a contact guy and I was pitching away from contact.
“There was so much damage being done when I threw it over the plate, so I was trying to be perfect with it. I didn’t have confidence in anything.”
In 2017, he led the major leagues with 93 walks. On July 25, in a fit of rage while the Tampa Bay Rays rocked him for a five-run second inning, he made up a pitch mid-start in a last-ditch effort to harness his careening career. Miley gripped his slider and threw it as hard as he could. The baseball cut surprisingly well.
“Never thought about throwing a cutter,” Miley said. “Just because of how I threw across my body, I didn’t think it would work. I just did it. That’s how frustrating of a year 2017 was. I was making (stuff ) up out there as I went. Just trying to figure out how to get outs.”
Picking up the pace
The cutter came and went. After four or five successful starts tossing it in 2017, teams keyed in and started not swinging when they recognized it was coming.
Miley’s inexperience with the pitch left him incapable of commanding it in the strike zone. His season ended as it started — poorly — and his future was in doubt. The Milwaukee Brewers signed Miley to a minor league contract in February 2018, allowing him one chance to rekindle what seemed so lost.
A visit back to Louisiana and longtime pitching coach Chris Westcott allowed Miley the opportunity. He learned how to locate the cutter to all four quadrants of the zone. Using it to induce weak contact and complement his quick pace seemed a no-brainer. Infielders love pitchers who work fast. Umpires, too.
“And the hitters hate it,” Artigues said. “So let’s pitch it at a great tempo.”
Artigues instituted two rules at Southeastern Louisiana: pitchers can never turn their back to the catcher or leave the dirt on the mound. Miley still adheres to both religiously.
“He’s just such a competitive guy that he wants to come right at you,” Artigues said. “I think it really helps him because, hey, don’t think about the next pitch, just get after him and execute it. It eliminates overthinking on the mound for some guys. The catcher puts a number down and Wade is really good about calling what the catcher puts down, and he goes after it.”
Elevating four-seam fastball
The Astros cannot sign a pitcher without the industry wondering if and how they will change him. Gerrit Cole and Collin McHugh were reinvented to rousing success. Charlie Morton, too.
In Milwaukee, Miley was sensational. He suffered a groin injury during spring training but, when he returned in the second half, was one of the National League’s most reliable arms. He threw to a 2.57 ERA in 80⅔ innings and made four postseason starts.
One ended after one batter, Craig Counsell’s famous counter to the Los Angeles Dodgers platoon-happy lineup in the NLCS. Miley received 25 baseball cards from Major League Baseball for the occasion — commemorating the first man to start two playoff series games in a row.
All of his Brewers success stemmed from the cutter. Signing with Houston offered an initial hint that, perhaps, the team of Astros analysts and baseball operations found another wrinkle to exploit.
“I think there’s maybe this misconception sometimes, from my point of view, with some of this stuff,” Harris said. “It’s not so much about ‘Stop doing this and you need to grip the ball this way and change your delivery.’ It’s more so like ‘Hey, you’re really good when you do this. Let’s try to do that more often.’ ”
Harris was Miley’s main advocate to general manager Jeff Luhnow. Though they knew of one another through mutual friends, the two Louisianans first formally met in 2013 and lived together in 2014, Miley’s last season as a Diamondback.
Enticing Miley to Houston was easy.
He harbored no apprehension at the possibility of changing his approach or arsenal. “Change is great,” Miley said.
Instead, Miley is throwing his cutter more than he did last season with the Brewers. The pitch darts inside to most righthanded hitters, resulting in feeble contact to the left side of the infield. Opponents who put it in play do so at an average exit velocity of 89.2 mph.
“Just hit it on the ground,” Miley said. “I told (Alex Bregman) from day one, be ready over there, pal. Wear a cup. It’s going to be coming in hot.”
According to BrooksBaseball, Miley throws his cutter 50.34 percent of the time. Fifty-six percent of the contact in play is on the ground. Opponents hit just .231 against it and slug .398. The deception lies in when the baseball cuts. Ordinary cutters can start their movement early in the flight plane.
“It’s really a four-seamer until the last second,” catcher Robinson Chirinos said. “It’s not cutting from halfway to the plate. As a hitter, that’s why it’s hard to put a good swing on it. They know he’s going to throw a cutter. … It’s different when you see it on video, when you see it on paper than when you go and see it from the plate.
“When we’re throwing backdoor to a righty, it’s a true backdoor cutter. There’s no middle. I’ve had guys before try to go backdoor and it cuts back toward the middle of the plate. His backdoor is way off to the corner. And when we’re going in, it’s an in cutter.”
However effective the cutter is, the Astros still had one idea. They have requested Miley elevate more four-seam fastballs, unsurprising given the organization’s fixation on the tactic.
Miley always maintained feel for a four-seamer, but he aimed it down in the strike zone. In spring training, Houston’s analytics team and coaching staff promised weak, but elevated, contact to right field and right-center if Miley elevated his fastball adequately.
Miley enjoys ground balls and, initially, was nervous. Results in spring training were not to his liking, either.
“I’m throwing it in spring and it was missiles to right-center field,” Miley said. “Singles, doubles. I’m thinking ‘This isn’t it.’ I stopped throwing it early in my outings in spring. Threw a couple and it would be ‘Whatever’ and go to the cutter. Now, I’m slowly trying to mix it in.”
On May 24, Miley pitched against the Boston Red Sox for the second time in five days. He and Chirinos conferred for a game plan. Tossing too many cutters could be lethal. Out of necessity, they went to the four-seamer. Eighteen in all — the second most Miley has thrown as an Astro.
“Those guys were expecting the ball to cut and it was a true four-seam and they were swinging and missing,” Chirinos said. “Even J.D. (Martinez) was late to his four-seam up and in. I think (Miley) is getting comfortable using that four-seam. It plays together with his cutter when we use it good, inside to righties.”
Added Miley: “I think when it comes down to needing an out or needing to make a pitch, at the end of the day, I’m probably still going to throw a cutter. But I’m closer.”
Son of a southpaw
When he can, Wade brings Jeb inside the Astros’ clubhouse after games. He turns 3 in September and is beginning to hit off a tee.
Understanding the game will come soon, Miley hopes. When Harris is on the mound, Jeb will approach the television, point and say “Will, Will, Will!” Katie sends videos for Wade to watch. Jeb will do the same for Wade, too, watching the renaissance of his father who, just a short time ago, thought he could do it no more.
“I was just ready to be done with it (in 2017),” Miley said.
“This kind of all happened, and I’ll try to ride this as long as I can.”