Miller prepared for late-season workload

This story was excerpted from Daniel Kramer’s Mariners Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

SEATTLE -- Bryce Miller is still growing as a pitcher in just about every sense, and his late-season stability could be vital to the Mariners’ path to the postseason.

Obviously, much of Seattle’s playoff hopes hinge on its offense giving its pitching staff just enough support on any given night. But at this time last year, as the club was also fighting for October before coming up just short, Miller was in the midst of an admitted downturn after a stellar beginning to his young career.

Over the final six weeks of 2023, Miller experienced diminished velocity, was hit hard more regularly and was simply trying to survive the workload demands of being in the Majors. Mariners manager Scott Servais quite literally knocked on the wooden bench in the visiting dugout in Detroit last week when asked about this very topic, but so far, Miller hasn’t experienced nearly the same dropoff.

Quite the opposite, actually.

“My body is a little more used to it, better than last year,” Miller said. “Last year, in some games, I'd hold velo late, but most of the games, I'd be dropping as the game went on.”

Miller enters Tuesday’s start at Dodger Stadium on a scoreless streak of 13 innings over his past two starts, over which he’s racked up 15 strikeouts and surrendered just five hits to 45 batters. More telling, though, is that the velocity has steadily risen on both his fastballs, with the four-seamer averaging 95.6 mph in August and the sinker at 95.3 mph -- the highest each has been over any month in his young career.

Add in that Miller added a curveball to his arsenal in a June 29 outing vs. Minnesota to go with the splitter he installed over the offseason, and the diversification of his arsenal has made those heaters play up even more. Because for all the tinkering he’s done to add new toys to play with, the fastballs remain his bread and butter.

Miller says that his sustainability has been almost exclusively rooted in the rigors he went through late last season, which led him to an arm-care routine he’s comfortable with. But Mariners pitching coach Pete Woodworth recently suggested that it’s also been tied to what Miller is doing away from the ballpark -- specifically with sleep and sustenance.

Until recently, Miller wouldn’t eat before starts on day games and only a little before those at night, a byproduct of gameday jitters and his focus being elsewhere than the kitchen. Now, he’s more deliberate about nutrition -- even consuming energy pouches and snack bars in the dugout tunnel between innings.

“I try to force a little more down,” Miller said. “But, once I get to the field, it's hard for me to just sit down and eat a large meal. Plus, whenever it's a day game and I get there and I try to eat a bunch of breakfast, then I drink a coffee, and then my stomach hurts. So I don't know. But I try to eat as much as I can, though, and I can eat a lot the day before, too, to just try to load up.”

When he goes home, Miller said he sleeps a whopping 11 hours per night, though the rest accumulation has mostly been the same since he debuted. Still, it underscores his diligence to recovery. Most of the Mariners’ pitchers actually sleep for as long as Miller does, as Logan Gilbert mentioned that he shoots for 12 hours per night but will settle for 10, and Andrés Muñoz said the same.

“There's not really any excuse to not get enough sleep,” Miller said. “It's all I do, really -- I just get home and then sleep till about 11 [a.m.], then eat some breakfast and head to the field.”

Earlier this year, it looked like Miller was steering in the wrong direction, with a 5.20 ERA over an eight-start stretch from May 17 through June 23. But in eight starts since, he has a 2.09 ERA -- and has looked as good of late as he has all season.

For as simplistic as his approach may seem, and with a personality that’s magnetic to all corners of the clubhouse, the 25-year-old is incredibly smart -- and constantly attempting to learn how to evolve.

“It's great to see a young pitcher like that at this time in the season have so much in the tank,” Servais said, “because we've got so many big games ahead of us.”