Rapid progress of Mariners’ Bryce Miller isn’t normal, explains Gilbert

Back-to-back scoreless starts by Seattle Mariners starters is becoming a thing, with Bryce Miller and Logan Gilbert accomplishing the feat against the Mets last weekend, and Bryan Woo and Miller doing it against the Tigers this week.

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Though only half of those starts resulted in wins, the Mariners’ young starters are showing that if the team can get back on track and make the playoffs, they could have pitching options like no other.

After Gilbert’s outing in Seattle, pitching coach Pete Woodworth marveled at what he had just witnessed and pointed to Miller as perhaps an instigator of the very best kind.

“This group, they keep pushing each other,” he said in a walk-off radio interview following a 4-0 win over New York on Aug. 10. “Bryce especially, he just tries to take something from all of them. We joke around that he’s just taking pitches from every single guy, whether it’s on our staff or in the league, like a mutant. Just like turning into a different pitcher every month with a new pitch. Again, he’s a young kid who continues to just develop and get better, month in and month out.”

Gilbert has a special appreciation for what he sees in Miller, who over his last six appearances has a 1.72 ERA with five quality starts, including four separate scoreless outings of at least six innings.

“He’s fun to watch,” Gilbert said Thursday before the Mariners’ finale in Detroit. “He actually reminds me of myself a little bit, and I don’t think people realize how much of a tinkerer (Miller is). Just the ability to add new pitches, variations of his pitches, and he understands the analytics and data and all that stuff. I know he’s got this Texas personality that people probably don’t think that he’s into the numbers. He’s into the analytics, all that stuff. He understands it really well.”

What Gilbert sees that is different between himself and Miller is the ease in which he is able to add pitches. The “mutant” quality, if you will.

“The thing that pops out is when ‘Big Mike’ (Baumann) was here and he’s got that nasty curveball, super high velo, you don’t see it very much,” Gilbert said. “But Bryce asked him how to do it and took it, and one or two days later we were in Tampa, (Miller) threw a bullpen, and by that bullpen he had it already and that was his first time throwing it on the mound. That’s kind of stuff takes me all offseason to do. He’s just in the middle of season, messing around, stole his grip, threw the pitch. It was almost the exact same thing. So that’s when I’m like, OK, that’s kind of next level. I didn’t expect that.”

Gilbert emphasized there is always thought and intent to what Bryce does. If it looks like he is just playing around with new pitches, he is not.

“I think what I started to understand (in adding new pitches), the biggest thing is finding whatever the need is and kind of working backwards from there to what pitch needs to be,” Gilbert said. “The shape, the velo, going for swing and miss, soft contact, lefty/righty. Bryce does a really good job. He kind of has different things, the lefty and righty arsenal, and most of his pitches work to both. So it’s great, but he comes in with the great four-seam (fastball) and then eventually adds a sinker, like things that he didn’t necessarily need to do but they do make him better. So most people would probably be OK with ‘good enough,’ but he’s always adding different breaking balls, trying to find a way to get the edge.”

Each Mariners starter is invested in the other, with even the veteran Luis Castillo saying earlier this week he has learned a lot from the others. While they are on their own on the hill, they work together as a group. This no doubt has helped Miller and Woo, both of whom are in their first full seasons of big league ball after debuting during the season in 2023.

The progress they have made in such a short time should not be taken for granted.

“It says a lot about them where we’re at right now. It’s kind of like they’re all grown up in a way,” Gilbert said. “It’s like, they’re young and I think it’s even more impressive what they’re doing because of their age only a couple years in. But it also says a lot that we’re in the playoff push and they’re pitching their best baseball right now, finding a way to win, trying to go as deep as possible in games. They’re doing stuff that you see from guys six, seven years in the league. And they’ve learned really quickly, the learning curve for both of them is so small, so short, that they pitch like veterans even though they’re just a year and a half into the league.”

Hear the full comments from pitching coach Pete Woodworth and pitcher Logan Gilbert from the Clubhouse Insider segment of Thursday’s Mariners Radio Network pregame show in the podcast at this link or in the player near the top of this post.

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