Behind Bryce Miller’s slow start for Mariners could be a slower fastball

Bryce Miller got off to a famously fast start with the Seattle Mariners.

Called up in May 2023, Miller allowed just one earned run over his first three outings and began his MLB career with five straight quality starts – that’s at least six innings pitched with no more than three earned runs allowed.

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Miller wasn’t just barely meeting the bar, either. Of those five quality starts, four were completely scoreless, and another saw him allow just one earned run.

Unfortunately for Miller and the Mariners, his start to the 2025 season has been much, much slower.

The 26-year-old right-hander has yet to throw a quality start in his eight outings thus far. In fact, he’s yet to pitch six innings in a game this season. And on Sunday, he had his roughest appearance of the year, allowing seven runs on eight hits and two walks over five innings in a 9-1 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays, who completed a three-game sweep that ended Seattle’s run of nine consecutive series wins.

As things stand, Miller is 2-4 this season with a 5.22 ERA, 1.538 WHIP and minus-0.2 fWAR. Perhaps most telling is that with 35 strikeouts to 21 walks over 39 2/3 innings, he’s well off the 4.08 strikeouts per walk ratio he had for his career entering 2025, as his strikeouts per walk ratio this year is just 1.67.

What’s behind Miller’s slow start? One thing Mariners play-by-play broadcaster Aaron Goldsmith of ROOT Sports points to is a slower fastball.

In 2024, Miller averaged 95.2 mph with his four-seamer. This year, it’s 94.4 mph.

“Even though he’s got a wide bag of tricks that he can throw, I think when Bryce’s fastball is 95 mph as a floor, that’s the separator for him,” Goldsmith said Monday when he joined Seattle Sports’ Brock and Salk. “And they’ve done all the studies, right? It’s not just a Bryce Miller thing, it’s an any pitcher thing.”

Goldsmith sees how being down a tick in velocity can hurt the offerings across the board for Miller, whose Statcast page is full of a lot of blue this year when it was much more red in 2024.

“For Bryce, when he’s at 95, plus all the other clubs that he has in his bag, it’s like, OK, this is gonna be a long day for for the other lineup,” he said. “And this year, he’s not obviously pitched like that.”

Miller truly does have a whole bag of tricks, as he also throws a sinker, splitter, curve, slider, sweeper and cutter. And that’s perhaps why he has been able to give the Mariners a few decent starts this year. He’s had a pair of scoreless five-inning outings and another one where he gave up just one run.

But as Sunday indicated, the lack of velocity may be catching up to him.

“To his great credit, he’s been able to kind of smoke-and-mirror some things,” Goldsmith said, “and the baseline numbers, the back-of-the-baseball-card numbers, specifically the ERA, until just recently has been very acceptable despite really struggling. And all that it’s cost the Mariners, generally, has been another inning or two from the bullpen.

“But I don’t know how much longer that can continue and yesterday was a pretty good example of that.”

Hear the full Brock and Salk conversation with Seattle Mariners broadcaster Aaron Goldsmith in the podcast at this link or the audio player above in this post. Catch Brock and Salk from 6-10 a.m. weekdays on Seattle Sports.

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