Brad Miller, work in progress
Brad Miller was making me cringe again watching him last night. I had to tell myself to relax, especially as I watch him next to Zunino - two men with similar profiles and positional challenges who are right now trending in opposite directions. Miller's brutal inferno crash this year is frustrating, but not necessarily indicative of a lost career. So let's not get carried away by the aftermath of his two-month carwreck.
We talk all the time about how catching takes a lot out of a hitter, and stunts his growth. Some of it is the crouching, some of it is all the work on the "other aspects" of the position like framing, calling games, keeping the staff on track... there's a lot to worry about, and hitting is hard to concentrate on when you're working on the rest.
So when Zunino hits .220 over his first 400 PAs as a big-leaguer we understand his adjustment time. "Don't worry, he still has power. I know he's running a 9:66 (!) eye ratio but he's great with the pitchers, blocks everything, and has a cannon. Just needs to work on his transfer to throw out more guys, and stop swinging at everything away and he'll be fine - and besides, he's a catcher. He's still plus WAR."
Memo: Brad Miller plays a defensive position too.
Zunino: .220 /.285 /.370 with .2 eye, 28.6% K rate
Miller: .230 /.290 /.365 with .3 eye, 19.7% K rate
Don't get me wrong, Miller has been an abomination this year at the plate, but for their (short) big-league careers so far, they're basically the same dude. Zunino came in with the advantage of being a plus defensive catcher already, while Miller was a minus-defensive SS. He was so far minus in college that the ACC Player of the Year was already being talked about as a position switch before the draft. I didn't think he'd hit enough if he moved off the position and didn't see how he could get enough better to stay at short.
Well Brad's all right at short defensively. He's put in a lot of time and effort to make it so, and while it's not the entire cause of him falling apart at the plate I'm sure it didn't help. Miller looks worse because he's regressing while we see signs of progress in Zunino (eye and K rate aside, unfortunately).
So the question is: how long do we ride out the bumps in Miller's learning curve at SS? We have Franklin and Taylor already in AAA (for now) and both play the position. Miller is probably better with the glove than Franklin, and worse than Taylor. Offensively, however we rushed Brad through 4 levels of the minors in 800 ABs and chucked him up against ML pitching after he'd seen less than one season of upper-minors action.
On my war against rushing the Next Wave, Miller is yet another example of of us thinking 100 ABs to maintain service time is the only use for AAA. He had a great hundred at bats, don't get me wrong - but is he paying for that now? He's all kinds of messed up mechanically; the Tin Man meets Rock-em Sock-Em Robots. I love Charlie Gehringer, but that's not the kind of Mechanical Man Miller is emulating at the moment. His approach is bad this year, and with his chin out and shoulder flying open he's flailing at everything. His line drives have fallen like a stone, turned into lazy cans of corn and while his .224 BABIP makes his line misleading... his balls-in-play average is in large part a result of the terrible contact he's making.
His swing rates are in line with last year's when he was a plus-hitting SS. His zone contact is a little down, but still about average. He's just making the wrong kind of contact over the last couple hundred PAs.
It's okay to ride that out. Do I wish Franklin had been able to steal his job so that Miller could go back to the minors and work on it while we had Productive-Franklin in the lineup? Sure. But Nick's in a similar boat to Miller, without the same kind of severe rushing. Both guys are in need of an adjustment period, at the same point in their careers. $100,000 question: is that adjustment period exactly unusual for a middle infielder?
------------------
Since both Miller and Franklin are bat-first players, not glove-wizards, let's look at some offensive middle-infielders from the last couple of years and how they started their careers.
- Jed Lowrie, supplemental first round pick in 2005. Got his first shot in 2008 at 24, popped a 90 OPS+ in Boston, then sputtered in a few games in 2010 before having another nice couple hundred PAs in 2010. Traded twice afterward, finally got his first year to start fulltime in Oakland and naturally had a tremendous year at age 29. Miller is 24, btw.
- Johnny Peralta. Came up at 21, was miserable, then a small cup of coffee at 22, still bad... before landing full-time at age 23 after 1300 upper-minors PAs to start hitting major league pitching. Miller has had a third that many.
- Jose Reyes. Another international FA who came up incredibly early at 20, and spent 3 seasons and 1200 PAs being fairly terrible until he turned 23 and figured it out. Brad would have another year and a half to go on that scale.
JJ Hardy had 1400 minor league PAs and 600 big-league ones before he was more than a .240/.310/.390 hitter - and he's still had his ups and downs as a multiple-time-All-Star. At 2B, Brandon Phillips got his first cup of coffee at 21, and got good at 26 after a long return to the minors. Aaron Hill had two 90 OPS+ years to begin his career, followed by a very good one, a poor one, a very good one, two terrible ones back-to-back, and then two unrecognized all-star ones. There aren't a lot of Tulos in the league, and with drug testing it's harder to manufacture them.
-----------------
All I'm saying is, with a bat-guy trying to master a glove position, have patience. Look, I can't stand watching him at the plate right now he's so out-of-sorts; even with his minor course correction the last 10 days or so he's still a steaming hot mess in a paperbag on my front stoop. But the Ms make the change in Miller's swing, he effected it, and he demolished the minors with it. The regression from that to this is not permanent. Don't count on Miller to turn into Jeter or something, but he'll get it back. It would be awfully strange for him NOT to be an average-hitting SS. He would have to fail on the level of Smoak or Montero... Okay so we've seen that happen and know it's possible, but it would be strange for it to happen AGAIN. If it does, then I'm guessing we should fire every hitting instructor we have because we can't seem to get the talent we're drafting to perform at more than their worst-case levels.
But we ain't there yet. Let Miller ride it out. He should be a part of our next contender, and a nice contributor at the plate. He just can't do it now. He needs time and patience - and some teammates to carry the load would be a nice bonus too.
~G