A's Closer Mason Miller is "The Most Electric Pitcher in Baseball"
The Oakland A's have won three series in a row for the first time since May of 2021, and they enter the week with a 7-9 record, just one game back of the Texas Rangers (a team they took two of three from) in the AL West.
While this run is certainly a team effort, from better starting pitching to better defense to enough offense to win these games, having a lockdown closer doesn't hurt either. Mason Miller made his MLB debut last season as a member of the A's rotation, but late last year the club talked with him about being a reliever in an effort to keep him healthy over the course of a full campaign.
Right now it's looking like a wise move, and even had Pitching Ninja deem the new A's closer "the most electric pitcher in baseball."
On the afternoon pictured above, Miller needed just 13 pitches to strike out the side in order and secure the win for the A's. Every fastball he threw was at least 100 miles per hour, with some 88 mph sliders mixed in.
A quick look at Miller's page on Baseball Savant shows an awful lot of top-tier red.
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The ground ball rate doesn't really matter with the way that Miller has been pitching. So far this season he is striking out 45.5% of the batters he's facing, which currently ranks him sixth in baseball among pitchers with at least five innings.
Then you look at his expected ERA (xERA) of 1.36, compared to his actual ERA of 2.25, and realize he's been even more dominant that the traditional numbers suggest.
In the early going, the switch to relief has added two miles per hour to Miller's four-seamer, which sat at 98.3 in a mix between the rotation and the bullpen last season. It's averaging 100.5 mph this year through eight innings.
The right-hander is also down to just two pitches--fastball and slider--after offering up a cutter and a changeup in 2023. He said before the season started that he was focused on refining his pitch mix as a reliever and focusing on his strengths for 15-20 pitches instead of toying around with a third or fourth pitch. Outside of his first appearance of the season, he has struck out at least two batters in each of his last five appearances, culminating in 14 strikeouts over seven innings.