Bobby Miller Might Have It All
Traditional scouting, advanced stats, and Stuff+ models all agree
I recently wrote up why Reid Detmers was such a miss as my “no matter what” player for 2023, so of course I’m already thinking about who that player will be for next season.
Here’s one of the key notes from that linked article about Detmers (and really the offseason fantasy process as a whole):
If there’s one downside to doing too much early-offseason research/content, it’s that by the time we start drafting more frequently in March, there can be a tendency to forget the biggest lessons learned in November.
And last fall I was beginning to get ready to make [Corbin] Carroll my “no matter what” choice.
I obviously ended up going in a different direction, because by spring training the Carroll hype cycle was getting out of control, particularly on Underdog, and I thought I was being prudent by resisting the hype.
In reality, nothing had changed about my Carroll stance from November, and I’m still kicking myself for straying away from him just because everyone else was catching on.
And I don’t want that to happen this year, so I’m writing about Bobby Miller now.
I’m not saying Miller is going to be next year’s “no matter what” choice. All I’m doing is getting my thoughts out on him now, so that I can revisit them in February and March.
Even if I don’t end up with his name scribbled on a piece of paper tucked into my back pocket next spring, Bobby is going to be a frequent offseason target of mine. And we want to be early on him for those of us drafting already.
Scouting Report
Miller has been viewed as a premium prospect since the Dodgers took him in Round 1 of the 2020 amateur draft out of Louisville.
He reached Double-A in his ‘21 pro debut, and really impressed, but pitch limits and an oblique strain limited him to just 56 1/3 IP.
In 2022 we saw the beginning of what has become a trend for Miller — elite advanced metrics with an ERA that doesn’t quite line up. We’ll circle back to this in a bit.
In 112 1/3 innings across the minors that year Miller posted a 23 K-BB% and a 3.68 FIP…but with a 4.25 ERA. It’s worth noting this came with a very low left on base rate and an above average homer-per-nine rate.
Scouting wise, I really like how Fangraphs’ Eric Longenhagen summarized Miller’s arsenal this past January:
“In addition to the humming fastball, Miller wields three above-average (at least) secondary pitches that he mixes pretty evenly, especially against lefty batters. Firm, upper-80s changeups and sliders dart in different directions, and are thrown with 100 mph-looking effort. It’s tough for hitters who are looking for a fastball to do anything with them, even though Miller’s feel for locating his secondaries (especially his sinking changeup and low-80s curveball) is not sharp. Sheer unpredictability and velocity allow Miller to bully the strike zone without precision and still stay off barrels, while his well-executed pitches miss bats. It’s possible the ceiling on Miller’s curveball is big.”
Entering ‘23 Baseball America gave Miller a top-3 slider among their top 100 prospects, in addition to listing him as possessing one of the overall best pitch mixes in the minors.
He was a consensus top-30 prospect this past spring between BA, MLB Pipeline, and Baseball Prospectus. We can confidently say the scouting community viewed him as “a dude.”
Major League Debut and Stuff+
Here’s a screenshot covering part of a spreadsheet I recently shared with Patreon subscribers — a full Stuff+ leaderboard for rookie pitchers, with color-coded columns, and there’s also a tab where things are broken down by individual pitches.
There’s a lot to take away from the full sheet and it’s a resource I’ll be referencing throughout the offseason.
And before we go any further I want to be clear that I’m not just advocating for Miller “because his Stuff+ is good.” It goes deeper than that, and really the core of my entire argument for Miller is that he checks so many boxes — Stuff+, advanced stats, traditional scouting — hence the title “Bobby Miller Might Have It All.”
But this sheet is what brought me around to the idea of his true potential, and I hope that by talking through it I can shed some light on how I utilize Stuff+ in my analysis.
So here’s another screenshot of that same spreadsheet, and the names didn’t fit in this one, but Bobby Miller is at the top. What sticks out?
To me, it’s that he has 5 pitches grading out as above-average, with two elite offerings in his fastball and slider.
This screenshot is the top of the rookie leaderboard, so it’s a sample of the best young arms. But if we zoom out to look at all rookies, or even all starting pitchers, then you get a better sense for how rare it is to have so many above-average pitches.
Here’s another way to look at his arsenal, courtesy of Baseball Savant, which also shows his usage rate for each pitch.
I’m not as into Savant’s Run Value results as I am Stuff+, but I wanted to capture another way of looking at Miller’s arsenal. And if you want to read a little more about Run Value you can do so here.
It’s interesting that his slider is the one below-average pitch here, but we once again see a path for him to have multiple ways of attacking hitters.
Optionality
Whether through scouring reports, Stuff+ models, or Savant’s run values, we see that Miller has options with his arsenal.
Whereas fellow rookie Taj Bradley has a great fastball but no standout secondary, Miller doesn’t appear to be reliant on his heater in any given appearance. If his fastball is off that day for whatever reason, he can lean on other pitchers. Oh he lost the feel for his slider this month? Time to ramp up the curve usage for a bit.
Think about some of the best, most veteran, pitchers in baseball — Zack Wheeler, Gerrit Cole, Corbin Burnes, etc. These guys have multi-layered pitch mixes that can attack hitters in a variety of ways.
Compare this to someone like Graham Ashcraft, who has one of the best sliders in the sport….but legitimately nothing else.
Even Stuff+/advanced metric darling Spencer Strider is someone who suffers from a lack of optionality. He famously only has two pitches, and while they’re damn elite, he doesn’t have other levers to pull. It might be affecting his ERA/FIP split.
All offseason we’re going to hear about two-pitch pitchers working on developing a new offering. Bradley is a prime candidate. Bobby Miller doesn’t need to do that, though. He might need to make some refinements, or a slight pitch mix change, but the base of it all is already present.
Concerns
I was recently reading a piece in The Athletic about Craig Breslow joining the Red Sox, and this quote on pitching development stood out to me:
“Some would argue too much time is being spent increasing and maximizing stuff rather than focusing on the nuances of pitching. That’s an issue across baseball and not unique to the Cubs.”
Hand up — I’ve been guilty of this lately.
It’s really easy to say this pitcher has great pitches per this model, but if the results aren’t there it’s okay — it’s just variance. When someone like AJ Smith-Shawver or Emmet Sheehan skyrocket through the minors, all while flashing good “stuff”, there’s a case to be made that they’re big league ready.
But pitching is obviously more than that. There’s learning to game-plan for different opponents, adjusting when you don’t have your best “stuff”, and playing the constant cat-and-mouse game with every new hitter that steps up to the plate.
It makes me think of this bell curve meme, where the guy on the left might be a “traditional” baseball lifer who has always known pitching is nuanced, and the struggling person at the top is trapped by thinking he’s found a better way to evaluate pitching.
But the best position to be in is the guy on the right, who has learned about Stuff+ and other new-age techniques, digests it all, and reaches the conclusion that pitching is indeed very nuanced.
This is an overly simplistic example, but I find a lot of fantasy players can get stuck at the top of that bell curve, not just with Stuff+, but with anything new — Savant’s expected stats come to mind here.
And the point is we always want to make sure we then take a step back and wind up as the guy on the right, where we’ve trekked through the mud to learn as much as possible, but without forgetting the original lessons along the way.
And then there’s the mental side of being a professional baseball player. Heading into this year’s playoffs the Los Angeles Times wrote about how Miller learned to control his emotions throughout 2023, and that he would over-exert himself at times.
My guess is this would occur when the going got tough — men on base, pressure situations — and that it dates back to his time in the minors as well.
It’s the sort of soft science rationale that could explain something like a low left on base rate, or an ERA/Stuff+ split.
And to be clear, I’m NOT framing Miller as some hot head who can’t control himself. It’s just a real example of pitching being nuanced. Zack Wheeler became a legend this postseason by looking calm and collected with every pitch he threw. It takes time to reach that stage, though. Luckily Miller has his entire career ahead of him.
I should probably get to my actual concerns now, and in an effort to be concise I’m going to just list them out:
He struck out less than a batter per inning, which led to a non-elite 17.2 K-BB%.
The LOB% was low in the majors.
As we learned from Cristian Javier this season, we want to remain price sensitive even when it comes to our favorite breakout picks.
He totaled 140 1/3 IP this season, so what can we realistically expect for next year? Note the Dodgers are likely to plan for a deep postseason run as well.
While previous-season ERA isn’t something I put a ton of value on, Miller was a 3.76 and there’s no guarantee he figures out all the nuances of pitching in just a single offseason.
Bringing It Home
Now that I’m on record with what can go wrong, and why we should exercise at least a little restraint while drafting, let’s swing back to his upside case.
Here are Jordan Rosenblum’s preliminary 2024 starting pitcher projections:
The column on the left includes Stuff+, and this is why Miller could wind up as a value all offseason. We’ll see what happens when other projection systems come out this winter, but the column on the right suggests there could be a gap in value with folks who utilize Stuff+ and those who don’t.
That doesn’t mean the column on the left is “correct.” It’s just another data point to consider.
One more note on the modeling side of things, but Miller also had the best Pitching+ among all rookie arms this year, and the third best among all pitchers in MLB.
This suggests that platoon splits won’t be a problem like they are for Ashcraft, and further reinforces my idea that Miller’s arsenal gives him the “optionality” to roll over a lineup multiple times per start, and 30+ times throughout a season.
And this is where we wind up on the far right of that bell curve meme.
Scouts love Bobby Miller. Stuff+ models love him. The production was there as a rookie, and it wasn’t elite, but from everything we know there are several directions for him to go where it could become elite very quickly. His command isn’t bad. There’s so much signal from a variety of places that he can grow in to an ace.
I have him at SP15 in my latest dynasty rankings on Patreon.
Let’s see where the hype train is at come spring training.
