Notes: Miley discusses up-and-down outing

Wade Miley finished off his outing on Wednesday night at Truist Park by getting the last batter he faced, Austin Riley, swinging at a low changeup. The ball scooted past catcher Tucker Barnhart, and Miley briefly watched Barnhart toss the ball to Joey Votto at first before walking stone-faced toward the dugout.

Miley retired each of the last nine Braves he faced and needed just 18 pitches to move the Reds through the fourth and fifth innings. Unfortunately, the damage was done well before that stretch in the loss to Atlanta, as Miley allowed five earned runs in the first three innings.

“Early on, he struggled,” Reds manager David Bell said. “The fact that he was able to find it the last couple of innings and keep the score right there turned out to be a really important aspect of the game. I think he was having trouble getting a feel, I don't know if it was the rain or what, but he definitely got his feel back the last couple of innings.”

Though Miley finished with the control and soft contact that are typically part of his game, those were his main issues in the early innings of Cincinnati’s third straight loss.

In his first 20 starts of the year, Miley had only walked more than three batters once (July 26 against the Cubs). By the time he’d made it through the Braves’ first 10 hitters, the left-hander had already walked three batters and came dangerously close to walk No. 4, when Jorge Soler worked a full count.

“Just didn’t have a good feel for the baseball,” Miley said. “Changeup, I wasn’t commanding it, and you know, I was kind of a one-side-of-the-plate-pitcher, and that’s tough for me.”

While Miley was getting his control issues in check, Atlanta was recording the hard contact that had eluded most of Miley’s opponents in 2021. He went into the game ranked in the 94th percentile with an 85.5 mph average exit velocity, which was the fourth-lowest mark among qualified Major League arms, per Baseball Savant. Through three innings, though, the Braves had a 93.3 mph average exit velocity, and of the 11 balls they put in play, just three were below his season average, while five sat at 97-plus mph.

Miley looked more like the pitcher who’d gone unbeaten since May 19 when he retired eight straight after Dansby Swanson’s sacrifice fly put Atlanta up 5-0 in the third. A late rally that tied the game up at 5-5 in the ninth ultimately kept Miley’s unbeaten streak alive, but the early struggles were too much to overcome.

“I had been chasing. I’d been chasing, and that was a fault on me,” Miley said. “I was trying to figure it out and compete. I was chasing a feel for something, and I kind of found it in the middle of the fourth and went from there. Just a little too late.”

Castellanos available off the bench for series finale
Just before Joey Votto tied the ballgame at 5-5 with a two-run home run in the ninth inning on Wednesday, Nick Castellanos was hit by a pitch from the Braves’ Will Smith and moved to first base.

That was the second time Castellanos had been clipped by an Atlanta pitcher in the game. In his sixth-inning plate appearance -- one that also came just before a Votto two-run shot -- Castellanos was barely clipped on the leg by Touki Toussaint, and he was awarded first base after the initial ruling was a ball. The ninth-inning hit by pitch was much clearer, though, as Castellanos took Smith’s 2-2 slider off of his left foot and then took his base.

According to Bell, Castellanos had swelling in the area that kept him out of the starting lineup for Thursday’s series finale. X-rays taken on Castellanos’ foot were negative, but as a precaution for the slugger who only just came off the injured list a week ago, Bell and his staff decided to make him available to pinch hit rather than start him in the field.