Miller's resurgence arriving right on time for Mariners

SEATTLE -- Flip the calendar back a year, and you’d find a very different Bryce Miller in a very different situation, in the midst of what shaping up to be a lost year.

Last July, the right-hander was on his second IL stint of the season dealing with elbow issues, still three weeks away from his return to a Major League mound. He hadn’t thrown a pitch to a hitter in a month and a half, hadn’t made it through the sixth inning all year and had an ERA closer to 6 than to 5.

It was a far cry from his breakout season in 2024, when he posted a 2.94 ERA in 180 1/3 innings; in terms of Baseball Savant’s pitching run value, Miller dropped from the 99th percentile of pitchers all the way down to the ninth in ‘25.

Flip those calendar pages back forward, and a whole lot has happened in the 12 months since to get Miller back to the place he wanted to be before last year’s detour. Eleven outings into 2026, the 27-year-old boasts a 2.27 ERA and a 0.88 WHIP and has recorded 71 strikeouts.

Most importantly, he’s throwing the ball the way he knows he can, which is exactly what the Mariners will need from him Friday night when he takes the mound for the first of four games in a pivotal AL West set vs. the Rangers.

“It’s been a roller coaster, but this year has been a whole lot more fun than last year, for sure,” he said.

To hear him recount it, “this year” really began last fall. Even after his second return from the IL last August, Miller was struggling. He needed a moment, something positive to break his way.

He got that in the playoffs: Game 1 of the ALCS in Toronto, when he delivered six innings of one-run ball on short rest. It was one outing, but it gave a “completely different feeling” to the offseason that followed.

“Throughout the regular season, I felt like if anything, I was hurting the team,” Miller said. “I wasn’t helping at all. Just feeling like I was able to have an impact on last season positively was big for me.”

There would be more on the injury front to deal with, as Miller dealt with an oblique strain that cropped up at the beginning of Spring Training and held him out the first five weeks of the season.

On one hand, Miller said it was a less stressful challenge to work through, just because it wasn’t his elbow anymore and he was able to do just about everything in his routine without pain. On the other hand, the one thing he couldn’t do was the most important part.

“The only time I would feel it was whenever I got on the mound and tried to step on it and throw hard,” he said. “... Every time, I would be like, ‘Alright, hopefully today’s the day,’ and get up on the mound, and for three or four weeks, the first couple throws I’d feel it and we’d have to back off.”

All he could do was wait for his motion to not hurt. Seven weeks into his recovery, that day finally came.

“It just took a month and a half to turn the page, and once it did, it hasn’t given me an issue,” he said.

On May 13, Miller finally made his season debut. He hasn’t just picked up where he left off in ‘24; he’s been even better. Through 11 outings, his chase rate has risen from 27.1% in ‘24 to 36.2% in ‘26. A lot of that has to do with his splitter boosting up to a 34.6% whiff rate and a 27.3% putaway rate.

It’s not just the splitter, though; six of Miller’s seven pitches have seen dramatic increases in chase not only from last season -- which at this point is looking more and more like an injury-effected outlier -- but also from his breakout two years ago. The only one that isn’t is his sinker, which, coincidentally, he’s throwing less than ever.

“Really, I think the big step for me this year is that when I get to 0-2 or 1-2 quick, I’m able to finish hitters,” he said. “Being able to get to the swing-and-miss locations and getting the strikeouts whenever I can. In the past, I would keep hammering heaters up, and they would foul them off and I’d hope they missed one.

“Now, with the splitter, the sweeper and having different options, I’m able to get to 0-2 or 1-2 quick and then finish them off in different ways. That’s been big.”