BaseBallstotheWall

Wade Miley — LHP, Arizona Diamondbacks DOB 11/13/86
2009 Performance:
Lo-A: 113.2 IP, 127 H, 29 BB, 91 K, .347 BABIP, 3.77 FIP, 57% GB, 5% HR/AIR
Hi-A: 15 IP, 18 H, 4 BB, 11 K, .360 BABIP, 3.11 FIP, 52% GB, 0% HR/AIR

Selected in the supplemental first round (2008) by the Arizona Diamondbacks out of Southeastern Louisiana University, Miley appeared to be an interesting cross between projection and performance. He wasn’t exactly performing at a mecca of college baseball, but he was doing the one thing that translates to the minors and majors well: striking batters out.

From a scouting perspective, my major concern with Miley was that he seemed to have questionable command of his pitches at times, and also, that he threw across his body, which is a recipe for pitching injury everywhere. Both Baseball-Intellect and Saberscouting do an excellent job of breaking down the pros and cons to Miley’s approach to pitching. Honestly, I could care less if Miley has a “bulldog” approach to pitching, as both of these websites attest to, but what I do like is that his premier pitch is a breaking ball. Having an elite curve/slider will make Miley’s fastball look better, though these sites are correct in noting that Miley’s future success will depend on the development of his change-up, as you need three pitches to be a successful starter.

As for throwing across his body, it’s one of those things that might just NEED to be the case with Miley. I remember the Red Sox talking about Craig Hansen doing this and trying to alter him, and they’ve all but ruined his career. We saw a similar problem when Jonathan Papelbon adjusted his throwing motion to better compensate for some lingering shoulder soreness. As saberscouting suggests, Miley is able to use his across the body motion to throw off-speed pitches on the outside corner to right-handed batters, which gives him a huge opportunity of maintaining even splits and not having to face a lineup stacked with righties constantly. I have an inherent bias against left-handed pitchers for that very fact.

Because Miley doesn’t have an elite fastball (I’ve heard anywhere between 85-88 and 91-94, so it’s probably in between those two numbers) he still has to rely on command and location to get batters out. If he was walking 8-10% of the batters he was facing at Lo-A, I’d be very concerned about his future status, but given the 6.2% walk rate, I think he has a chance to be successful if he can maintain that. He has great groundball tendencies (57 and 52%, respectively, in his stints this year) and was clearly unlucky based on the BABIP allowed and in looking at his FIP (both times his FIP was under 4 while his ERA was over 4). That is really the nature of being a groundball pitcher in the minors as you’re just not going to get a ton of help from your fielders.

I am concerned about his strikeout rate and his homerun rate. Facing batters that don’t have a lot of power at Lo-A and giving up 8 homers as a groundball pitcher is a concerning number. We’ll see what happens as he moves up but it might illustrate an underlying problem with his command that the statistics are simply not providing us. Additionally, with a knock out curveball, and at his age (22 all year), it would have been nice to see Miley be a bit more dominant. He was good, but not great, and he perhaps should have been given his age and draft status.

In my estimation, Miley could go a couple of ways here (3, to be exact). He could see his K rate dwindle considerably as he faces more capable batters, but still be successful at keeping the ball on the ground and keeping batters from getting extra bases. He could see his K rate dwindle, his command problems return and flame out at Hi-A, or he could continue to miss bats at the rate he has currently and move into a top 5 system prospect type. My money is on option A, which will fasttrack him to the majors as a groundballer but will limit him to a long-relief or back-end starter position, which still has plenty of value.