Likely a Fixture for 2025 Cubs Bullpen, Tyson Miller Succeeded Where José Cuas Failed

[Matthew Trueblood]

Twice in a span of just over nine months, the Cubs acquired a side-arming, late-blooming right-handed reliever with a tantalizing combination of fastball shape and breaking ball possibilities. The first move didn't pan out. The second one has done so gorgeously.

Image courtesy of © David Richard-USA TODAY Sports

When the Cubs traded a minor-league power hitter with only a dubious future in the organization for a righty with an extreme release point and a flat VAA on their fastball, you could be forgiven for thinking they were just trying to turn off the José Cuas trade and turn it back on again. Chicago loves pitchers with unique combinations of release point and fastball shape, which is why they targeted Cuas last summer and Shota Imanaga this winter. It's also what led them to give up Jake Slaughter for Tyson Miller this spring, and whether they were consciously reprising the Cuas deal or not, it's worked, for exactly the reason why the Cuas move failed: command.

Miller, an ex-Cubs farmhand who pitched in the Rangers, Dodgers, Brewers, Mets, and Mariners organizations after leaving the team a few years ago, is almost a match for Cuas's extremity of release point and arm angle.

Like Cuas, Miller boasts a fastball with a flat vertical approach angle, which is highly valuable--in theory. In practice, though, that's only true if you can locate it, and if you have a secondary pitch that can fool hitters out of the hand to keep them off it. Pitchers who pair great rising action on their heater and elite velocity with that approach angle don't need to do much else well, but that's not remotely the case for Miller or Cuas, each of whom averages less than 92 miles per hour on their heater.

Throwing from such a wide angle narrows the plate for the pitcher, so it's almost impossible to throw even an average number of pitches in the zone from there. The trick is to have a merely below-average zone rate, rather than a borderline catastrophic one. Unfortunately, Cuas never learned that. In 36 appearances for the Cubs, he walked 12.1% of opposing batters, and only learned to hit the arm side of the plate, where hitters didn't experience as steep a horizontal approach angle.

Miller, by contrast, has solved the riddle. He's become so adept at working all the way across to the other side of the zone that most of his misses are there, but he's both minimized walks and managed contact fairly well, all by forcing hitters to handle balls veering steeply as they enter the hitting zone.

Normally, a pitcher who only sits around 90 miles per hour with the fastball can't afford to throw the ball in the middle of the plate as much as Miller does. Being in the heart of the zone and right around it so often has resulted in fewer whiffs than Cuas was getting and in a fairly pedestrian strikeout rate, but Miller's topline results as a member of the Cubs bullpen have been stupendous. He's gotten hit, at times, because those pitches run right into the bat paths of some hitters. He's only given up three home runs, though, and the dearth of walks has made those few extra-base hits much less costly than the ones Cuas gave up during his time in Chicago.

It's hard to overstate what a knee-buckling experience it must be for a righty to stand in the box against Miller.

What the Cubs hoped they could teach Cuas to do, Miller really can do. Firstly, his sweeper has a crazy amount of ride to it. Not for nothing did our Davy Andrews call it the "sweepiest sweeper in baseball" a month ago. His four-seamer's lack of ride from his low arm angle works in his favor, because the sweeper looks a lot like the four-seamer out of the hand--a lot like it. Much of that is thanks to the way he throws his fastball. He treats his four-seamer almost like a cutter, so his horizontal release angle on that pitch is steep. Of 375 qualifying right-handed pitchers, Miller has the 12th-steepest gloveside release angle on the four-seamer. Cuas is first, and others like them (that is, guys who throw from low slots or far toward third base) populate the top of the list, but whereas the rest of that fraternity all have above-average arm-side run on their heat, Miller's has more cutting action.

To the hitter, then, Miller's fastball already behaves like a cutter. It comes out of his hand at a steep angle, but instead of spinning back toward a right-handed hitter, it carries toward the outside corner. That makes the times when the ball has extra swerve and ends up being a sweeper especially cruel. Miller releases both pitches with the same initial angle of movement better than any of the other 93 righties who have thrown at least 50 four-seamers and 50 sweepers this year in MLB.

If you can pick up the spin, despite the funky release point, there's a giveaway to be found, because the two pitches do not have mirrored spin at all. But, trickily, recognizing the pitch is only part of the battle. Seam-shifted wake doesn't do with Miller's fastball what it does with most low-slot pitchers'. The fastball actually carries a bit more than it looks like it will (recall that flat VAA), in addition to behaving like a cutter. The sweeper, meanwhile, also checks up and holds its line a bit more than it looks like it will.

When they each get to the plate, the horizontal approach angles of the four-seamer and sweeper are reasonably different, but the vertical ones are identical--or so nearly so that they might as well be.

This cocktail of things is why Miller can throw strikes, but Cuas couldn't. It's why Miller gets a lot of called strikes and a lot of chases with his sweeper, but Cuas couldn't. It's why Miller has been able to induce weak contact and a lot of lazy fly balls, but Cuas couldn't. At a quick glance, they appear similar, in several important ways. Dig deeper, though, and the equally important differences stand out in sharper relief--which, by the way, is what Miller has given his old and new team.

There's more, too. Miller has added a sinker for righties and a curveball for lefties since joining the Cubs, taking pitches that were previously lurking almost unused and finding their utility as he learns to make the most of the things that make him unique. Primarily, though, he's been so good--a 1.42 ERA and a 0.79 WHIP--because his fastball and his sweeper are each unique, and the way they interact makes them even harder to handle than they would be on their own.

Under team control for years, yet, Miller is the single pitcher you can most confidently write into the Cubs' 2025 bullpen plans. He'll be there, and he'll play a vital role. Others will probably be more important, but Miller has already done enough to secure a place, as long as he can stay healthy. He's one of the least comfortable at-bats in baseball, and his success makes both his own acquisition and that of Cuas worthwhile.

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