Oakland Athletics fans have at least one thing (and maybe only one thing) to be excited about right now: Mason Miller.
Miller, 25, has been the best reliever in baseball so far this season. But what makes him a fascinating player isn’t just that he’s sitting down opposing hitters with ease—it’s how he’s doing it.
Miller throws harder than any pitcher in baseball right now. Way harder. His fastball averages 100.7 mph, the highest velocity in the majors. He’s thrown 97 pitches of at least 100 mph this season, 40 more than the guy in second place (Michael Kopech). He’s thrown 19 pitches of at least 102 mph. All other pitchers in the big leagues have thrown eight such pitches combined and no one else has more than three.
As if that wasn’t intimidating enough for hitters, Miller also throws one of the best sliders in the game. He ranks 10th in the majors in average vertical drop and 22nd in average horizontal movement. That means hitters have to anticipate whether Miller is going to throw them the fastest pitch they’ve seen all year or a breaking ball that disappears off the face of the earth. No one has been able to figure him out yet this season. He ranks second in the majors in whiff rate and seventh in hard-hit rate.
Miller’s first outing of the season came in mop-up duty in the ninth inning of a 12–3 loss to the Cleveland Guardians. He allowed two runs on three hits. Since then, though, Miller hasn’t allowed a run—a stretch of 11 straight scoreless appearances. He’s also allowed just four hits total over that stretch, and he hasn’t allowed an extra-base hit in any of his last nine games.
Wednesday afternoon’s game in Oakland was more of the same, as Miller mowed down the Pittsburgh Pirates in order in the ninth inning to lock up a 4–0 win for the A’s. He threw just 10 pitches, eight of which were strikes. He totally baffled Henry Davis with this nasty slider and got him to strike out. The other two outs came on harmless ground balls. It wasn’t a save situation, but it was his 11th straight scoreless outing.
The A’s, expected before the season to be the saddest team in baseball, are actually off to a pretty good start. They’re 15–17, which certainly isn’t great, but the bar is different for a team that went 50–112 last season and is currently playing games in front of a 90%-empty stadium as it prepares to ditch its longtime home in favor of a minor league park.
Oakland’s bullpen is a major reason why it has found that unexpected level of success. Last season, the A’s ranked dead last in bullpen WAR at Fangraphs. This year, they’re third. Last year, they had the third-worst bullpen ERA in the majors. This year, it’s the second best. And it isn’t just Miller. Veteran Austin Adams has a 1.86 ERA in 14 appearances and Lucas Erceg has a 1.42 ERA in 13 games.
As dire as things are for the A’s right now, Miller’s emergence as an elite shutdown reliever gives them hope that, whenever they decide they want to try to start winning again, they’ll have an unstoppable force at the back of the bullpen.
The Chicago White Sox are in the midst of a historic slump. And it doesn't appear to be getting better anytime soon.
The White Sox, who have lost a franchise-worst 14 straight games, were tied 1-1 with the Boston Red Sox in the third inning when left-handed pitcher Garrett Crochet made one of the oddest errors of the 2024 MLB season.
After fielding a soft ground ball hit by Jarren Duran that landed short of the mound, Crochet fired an errant throw past first baseman Andrew Vaughn. Vaughn raced after the ball, and Duran wheeled around first and second base and ended up at third.
The White Sox held a long meeting on the mound after the play. Once it concluded, Crotchet stepped off the mound to appeal that Duran didn't touch first base while rounding it on his way to second. But Crochet misfired—again—on his throw to first base, and Duran trotted home for the Red Sox's second run.
"That's what bad teams do," an analyst on the NESN broadcast said.
The White Sox have separated themselves as the worst team in baseball this season. Entering Friday, they had just 15 wins—seven fewer that the lowly Miami Marlins and Colorado Rockies—and rank last in batting average (.216) OPS (.618) and total runs scored (192).
Like race car drivers and opera singers, pitchers need to summon another gear in pivotal moments. It is how Jack Flaherty in 2019, at just 23 years old, joined Clayton Kershaw and Roger Clemens as the youngest pitchers in the past 48 years with a league-leading WHIP under 1.00. Averaging 93.8 mph with his heater, Flaherty, then with the St. Louis Cardinals, could hit 97 when he floored it.
The complement of two sharp breaking balls also made him the best young pitcher in the game. Riches and awards were to follow as surely as they did for Kershaw and Clemens.
His ascension never happened. The pandemic and injuries, especially to his oblique and shoulder, cast him into such a four-year wilderness of mediocrity (4.42 ERA) that when he hit free agency last winter at the prime age of 28, he could do no better than a one-year, $14 million prove-it flier with the Detroit Tigers.
That contract today looks like one of the best bargains of the winter. Jack is back. Entering a start Monday against the Cleveland Guardians, Flaherty leads the league in strikeouts, has posted a historic strikeout-to-walk rate to start a season, has tweaked his delivery and pitch usage and, yes, has rediscovered that extra oomph when he steps on the gas.
Look no further than the 1-and-2 fastball he threw to Lars Nootbar of the Cardinals in his last start Tuesday. Dotting the outside corner, the pitch was clocked at 97.8 miles per hour, as hard as Flaherty has thrown a baseball in five years.
“There were definitely times last year where I wanted to go to another gear and it was like it just stayed the same,” Flaherty says in a conversation I had with him earlier this year. “It was weird, and it just wasn't there, for whatever reason. And this year when I want to go to another gear, I’ve been able to get there.”
Says Tigers manager A.J. Hinch, “He was electric in his last start. He can really miss bats with his two breaking balls. His fastball was special the other day.”
Flaherty tied an American League record by striking out the first seven batters he faced in that game against his former team. He tied a career high and an MLB season high with 14 strikeouts overall. His average fastball velocity was 95.1, the fourth highest game average of his career and his best in four years. He obtained 24 swinging strikes, one short of his career high set in 2018. Ten of those whiffs came on his fastball, tying a career high.
The rebuilding of Flaherty began as a free agent after last season, which included telephone conversations with Tigers pitching coach Chris Fetter and assistant pitching coaches Robin Lund and Juan Nieves. They noticed his fastball properties improved after his Aug. 1 trade to the Baltimore Orioles, though his ERA in nine games with Baltimore was 6.75.
“I didn't feel great and by the end, it was just, ‘How can I get outs?’ “ Flaherty says. “Regardless of how it feels and whatnot, it's September. You’re put into a pennant chase. It was, ‘We'll just see. Find a way.’”
The Tigers’ coaches had success that year rebuilding another free agent pitcher, Michael Lorenzen, then 31. They de-emphasized his sinker in favor of more high-spin four-seamers. Lorenzen set career highs in wins, innings and strikeouts, made his first All-Star team and, after a trade to Philadelphia, threw a no-hitter. They had plans for Flaherty, but only hinted at them during the recruitment.
“When things were getting serious, we were on a call for two hours,” Flaherty says. “We talked this out. They presented ideas, but they don't want to … Those are tricky calls. They can't give you everything, like, ‘Here's all the secrets of what we think is going to make you better.’ But like, ‘You know, here's what we saw last year, and we can kind of help you get back.’ I've definitely never gone through it.
“Those calls are tricky because it's like, how do you ask them, ‘What can you do to help me?’ And then they give you a little bit, but not be able to give you everything because ‘If you don't sign here, we don't want to tell you this is what to do.’
“But in the end, it was their effort and the attention to detail that sold me.”
Flaherty pitches against the Minnesota Twins at Comerica Park on April 14.
Brian Bradshaw Sevald-USA TODAY Sports
Flaherty signed with Detroit on Dec. 20. Two weeks later, Frankie Montas, who is three years older than Flaherty and threw just 1 1/3 innings last season, signed with the Cincinnati Reds for $16 million, $2 million above Flaherty’s salary.
“Obviously it was a different offseason,” says Flaherty, who was a free agent for the first time. “At first it was not like having a team or anybody to go to and say, ‘Hey, what adjustments need to be made?’ So, I was kind of diving into it with my own team, my group, and figuring out, ‘What do we need to change?’ Because obviously, I was healthy, great, but I was not able to sustain success the way I wanted to. I didn't feel like the ball came out the same way. So, we had to dive into that and start making those adjustments.
“Once we signed here, then it was constant conversation [with the Detroit coaches]. ‘Okay, these are the adjustments that we think we can make.’ Now I had somebody to bounce ideas off of and go back and forth and send video to when it came time for a [bullpen]. So, it was a little bit more of, I kind of had to get back to a daily grind. Every day. And try to get back to the way I wanted my body to feel.”
Flaherty did not overhaul his delivery. He still has the smooth, old-school, three-part windup – hands over the head, kick and fire. He worked at fine-tuning the tempo and sequencing of that delivery. Ever since he starred on the mound and at shortstop for Harvard-Westlake High in California, Flaherty has been at his best when he relies on athleticism more so than pure mechanics. The injuries had compromised that athleticism.
“There were points last year where I just didn't … I tried as hard as I could to just be an athlete and for whatever reason it just felt weird,” he says. “I would say that I'm moving a lot better this year. Whether you want to call that mechanical? Sure. But I think the way that I'm going to fix it is the way I've moved, the stuff that works better for me. We really dove into the way that I was moving last year, and it would just be like, ‘Yeah, that's it!’”
An even bigger change came with how Flaherty used his pitches. Back in 2019, Flaherty threw fastballs 58.4% of the time. Since then, as analytics grew more sophisticated and technology around the game exploded, fastball use in MLB has declined every year—down to 46.7% this season, an all-time low.
The change was driven by a new generation of coaches, such as Fetter, who grew up with those modern tools. They know average spin is harder to hit than above-average velocity, and that the shape of spin can be custom designed. Fetter, 38, was hired by the Tigers after the 2020 season after serving as pitching coach for the University of Michigan. In a reversal of the historical paradigm, change flowed up to the majors from amateur baseball, including colleges and private instruction facilities.
Under Fetter, the Tigers have reduced their fastball use for a fourth straight year, ranking among the bottom 11 teams. Despite finding his turbo-boosted fastball again, Flaherty is throwing about as many fastballs as he did last year (43.7%), which is below major league average.
The biggest changes Flaherty has made under Fetter are ditching his ineffective cutter (.545 slugging percentage last year) and leaning much more on his swing-and-miss slider and curveball. He is throwing a career-high 52.6% breaking pitches, up from 44% last year and the fourth-most in MLB (min. 500 pitches). He has cut the batting average against his slider from .339 to .224 and his curveball has the third-most horizontal movement in MLB (min. 100 curves).
Pitchers who trade fastballs for spin often do so at the cost of more walks. Not Flaherty. He became only the seventh pitcher with 50 strikeouts and no more than five walks through the month of April. Even allowing that the modern era features more games in April, he joined a very impressive group:
Sure, it’s only six starts. And Flaherty hasn’t thrown 150 innings in a season since his breakout year of 2019. But one month into this season, the baseball is jumping out of Flaherty’s hand again. The athletic feel in his delivery has returned. So has 97 when he steps on the gas. It took an entire winter, when a 28-year-old free agent starter could do no better than a one-year deal, to bring back Jack.
“There’s working hard,” he says about his way back, “and then there's also being super intentional about it.”
The Tri-City Chili Peppers are all set to glow in the dark.
The collegiate summer league team in the Coastal Plain League announced plans to play its June 1 game under custom blacklights with UV-reactive uniforms, bats and balls that will appear neon in the light. It's certainly a unique promotion and, based on a video the team posted, will look incredible.
Worlds First Ever Cosmic Baseball Game will be played June 1st. Don’t Miss being a part of History. pic.twitter.com/eXnDAH6H5A
— Tri-City Chili Peppers 🌶 (@GoChiliPeppers) May 2, 2024
The Chili Peppers, who are based in Colonia Heights, Va., have come up with a really cool promotion. And the team confirmed the game will be streamed online. Both teams will be outfitted in the special uniforms.
There are several issues that could arise from this, including whether the balls will be easy to see in person. What happens if they get dirty and the light can't make them shine enough? That could make things dangerous.
The teams will practice under the blacklights to get used to them in hopes of making things safer. A few of the Chili Peppers players tried the equipment and it only took about 10 minutes to adjust.
Team owner Chris Martin said the "cosmic baseball game" will have the feel of "an 80s rave party" and music will be played throughout the game.
It sounds like a party and will almost certainly go viral.
