Has Miller turned the corner and could Zunino be close behind?

Brad Miller is enjoying what is perhaps one of the best 10-game stretches of his career. Miller’s numbers – a .429 average and an .821 OPS over the last 10 games – are a far cry from the .204/.273/.709 line he put up in the first half. It’s too soon to say if he is “fixed.” He has had nice stretches this year and then fallen off the cliff.

There is a good possibility, however, that he has taken a step forward and if he has, it would appear that sitting and platooning him from July 30 to Aug. 31 may have been beneficial. More beneficial than letting him play through it as seemingly had been the protocol in recent years with the Mariners.

“I’ve always said you can either play them or bench them and we tried both, neither one for an extended period of time until (Chris) Taylor got here and he got an opportunity to sit a little longer because Taylor was playing well,” manager Lloyd McClendon said when asked if the benching played a role in Miller’s turnaround. “Sometimes when you sit, you relax a little bit, you see things differently and you have the tendency to let things slow down for you and I think he did.”

A benching is never an easy thing to take, and in the clubhouse Miller kept the appearance that nothing was different as Taylor’s name continued to be written in the lineup. Behind the scenes he got to work, according to hitting coach Howard Johnson.

“Chris Taylor came up and did a really nice job, made a nice adjustment to the major leagues,” he said. “Mills being here and not playing and not really fighting that, he understood what was going on, that was the biggest thing. He accepted it and then tried to find ways to improve when he wasn’t playing so when the opportunity came back to play he could be productive, and that’s what happened.”

While baseball may famously be the game of failure, that is never truly the mindset. In the middle of the biggest struggles, the majority of players I have talked to have always believed that the one hit that will get them going is just around the corner. Sometimes that hit doesn’t come, or it does but is followed by nothing. But the belief is still the same. Time on the bench is sometimes the eye-opener. It can fire you up, force you to take a step back, wake you up or even free you up, according to Mike Zunino, who has had a few extra days off in the last two weeks.

“It’s a little bit of everything, honestly,” he said. “I don’t want to be anywhere else than on the field. I can’t sit still down in the dugout. I’m pacing back and forth, asking questions about the game. I’m one of those guys that I feel most at home and most comfortable when I am playing. When I am not in the lineup I just want to be out there and play any way I can.”

To that end, Zunino has had to look at his approach at the plate. A club-record 20 home runs is great. But a .196 average is not.

“When you do it wrong for so long you have got to change it,” he said. “When you are not doing what you are capable of and not trusting yourself and trying to over-generate, you get yourself in some bad situations. I’m just trying to buy into simply everything and trust the process of the whole thing.”

McClendon believes that both Zunino and Miller will be offensive forces in the years to come.

“You look at (Miller’s) minor-league numbers, this guys has done things Robinson Cano didn’t do in the minor leagues,” he said. “There is still a lot of learning to do. He’ll get better, but I think he’s the type of guy that should hit 25 home runs in this league. He’s got that kind of juice in his bat.”

As for Zunino, the power has not been the problem. Adjusting to the big leagues has been. The adjustments he is trying to make now are normally made in the minors and tough to do in the just 364 at-bats he had before being called up. As good a hitter as he was in college, he believes he can be a different hitter in the big leagues. The challenge has been to learn to not approach hitting – or more specifically the opportunity to hit – the same as he did before he became a professional.

“In college, heck, if you don’t get your five or six hits a weekend you are waiting for the next weekend to try to put some hits up,” he said. “Now I am taking it one at-bat at a time. I have a better idea of what guys want to do. It is now trusting that and trusting that process, not trying to do too much with just one swing because you know you are going to get 400, 500 at-bats in a year. You have got to try and know what guys are doing and stay in an approach that suits your game best and not try and get pull-happy. Or not try to ease the ball. You just try to have to find that one niche that is your style of hitting and stick with that. I think that is what I have been looking for.”

While Zunino has been invaluable to the pitching staff, McClendon and Johnson will not be content until he and the other young players develop as hitters. It doesn’t happen overnight and the process at this level is different than it is in the minor leagues. It is much more difficult.

“It’s the hardest thing, really, to try and develop and win at the major-league level,” Johnson said. “It’s probably the toughest dance you have to do. We’ve been real fortunate, We’ve got really good kids and Lloyd has done a great job with these guys giving them the right amount of playing time and talks. It’s been great to see.”

The end results, whether or not they develop into the hitters that the organization believes they can be, won’t be known for some time. But for now, Miller and Zunino are developing while contributing.

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