Bryce Miller didn’t have an especially good start at Fenway Park on Tuesday. The Seattle Mariners right-hander allowed five hits, four walks, and four earned runs over 4 2/3 innings. He took the loss in an 8-3 Red Sox win.
Alex Bregman was responsible for much of the damage. Boston’s third baseman tagged Miller for a run-scoring double in the third inning, and he followed that up with a two-run double in the fifth. His track record against the 26-year-old hurler belied the success. Heading into the game, Bregman was 1-for-15 against Miller, the lone hit being an infield single last May.
Not surprisingly, Bregman ended up being a main focus when I spoke to Miller on Wednesday afternoon. I began our conversation by asking him which plate appearances he’s dwelled upon the most when looking back at his uneven performance the night before.
“Most of the thought has gone to the walks,” Miller replied. “I wanted to have a quick fifth inning, but after getting ahead of [Ceddanne] Rafaela 1-2, I didn’t execute a few pitches and ended up walking him. After that, I got [Jarren] Duran out on a groundball, but then I walked [Rafael] Devers. Pretty much, there went my chances of a quick inning.
“The other at-bat I would circle is Bregman. It was first and third [following the two walks], and with one out I was wanting a groundball for a double play. He was something like 1-for-15 against me, and while I don’t think I’ve ever struck him out, along with some fly balls there have been a lot of groundballs. Knowing how I’ve pitched him in the past, he was probably sitting sinker. I went slider, sinker, and he got under it into the gap.”
Bregman stroked the liner 98.3 mph at an 18-degree launch angle into the left-center gap; it split the outfielders, took two hops, and clanged low off the Green Monster. Miller doesn’t necessarily feel that he threw the wrong pitch, but he does wish he would have located it better.
“If I’m going sinker there, especially in an 0-1 count, it needs to be at least two balls [inside],” he explained. “It was dotted down and in, on the corner, but it was a strike. What I needed to throw was a ball and try to break his bat. But again, my thought goes to the walks. That’s how the damage came. I set up the traffic with the two walks.”
Miller has a 12.8% walk rate so far this season — exactly double last year’s mark — to go with a 4.21 ERA and 3.22 FIP. Moreover, as he pointed out, a large majority of his walks (11 out of 14) have come against opposite-handed batters. That’s part of why the Bregman two-baggers stuck in his craw. Both were preceded by walks to Devers.
“I’ve been trying to be too fine, pitching to too-small locations against lefties,” Miller said. “In the past, it’s been attack with the heater over the plate, down the middle, and see if they can hit it. The last few weeks I haven’t been doing that. I’ve been giving up too many free passes, setting up traffic on the bases, so when they do get a hit — when they find a gap — I haven’t made them earn it. It’s been self-inflicted damage.”
Which brings us back to Bregman. In the first inning, Miller got him to ground out to shortstop with a sinker down in the zone on the second pitch of the at-bat. His next time up, Bregman hit a pitch that wasn’t even a strike.
“The double down the line in the third inning was on a splitter,” Miller said. “It was a good pitch — it was two balls down — and he just got to it. He’s a really good hitter. I had his number when he was in Houston, but I guess he’s adjusted. I need to be able adjust back. You can’t be predictable out there.”
Pitch sequencing plays a big part in getting outs, and with a five-pitch mix (six if you include his rarely used cutter), the young right-hander doesn’t lack for options. But again, the sinker that Bregman roped for a two-run double wasn’t solely a matter of being too predictable. With a caveat that the earlier hit had come on a pitch that would have been called a ball, this one was mislocated within the zone.
“I had the advantage with the first-pitch strike, so it was about executing off of that and not giving him a pitch to hit,” Miller explained. “I’ve thrown to him probably 20 times, and there have been a lot of groundballs off of sinkers, so with first and third, one out, I’m sure he was looking for a groundball pitch. He was like, ‘I’m not going to give him a groundball here.’ That’s what happened. He got me.”
It turns out, the sinker in the fifth may not have been predictable at all.
“He has one of the best four-seam fastballs in the league, and he only threw me one of those,” Bregman told me. “In the past, he’s thrown me a ton of four-seams and I’ve flied out.”
But what about on Tuesday? Was he sitting sinker on the second double?
“Maybe, maybe not,” the savvy 10-year veteran said to that question. “The world will never know.”
Content Source: blogs.fangraphs.com