Andrew Miller, One Of The Best Relief Pitchers Of His Generation, Has Called It A Career

I should probably be pretty conflicted regarding my thoughts about Andrew Miller. Yes, he was part of the trade that brought Miguel Cabrera to Detroit, but most of my memories of Andrew Miller involve him killing my favorite baseball team. And yet, there is nothing but respect. He was so freaking good. He was great with the Orioles, he was great with the Yankees, and in his time in Cleveland, he was as good as it got. Andrew Miller was one of the best relief pitchers I have ever seen. It may have been a short-lived prime, but there was a period where if Andrew Miller was going to face you, you weren’t going to go deep, and odds were you were probably going to strike out on that nasty slider that he featured. 2014-2017 Andrew Miller was as good as any reliever that I’ve ever seen. In that, Miller pitched 261 innings and put up a 1.72 ERA. He struck out a ridiculous 14.5 batters per nine innings, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. 

You can strongly argue that outside of Mariano Rivera, Andrew Miller is the second-best relief pitcher in baseball history. Andrew Miller pitched 38.2 innings in his postseason career. He gave up four runs. That’s good for an ERA of 0.93. He pitched 7.2 innings in the 2016 ALCS and gave up zero runs, striking out 14. His FIP in that series was -0.51. 

Who knows what could’ve become of him if Miller had not gotten injured in 2018? You wonder if he was overused in some of those postseasons, but every time Cleveland needed a guy out of the pen, he would dominate. I’m sure he has a few regrets, but for a brief time, he was money.