Wade Miley has found a way to extend his career

Wade Miley has found a way to extend his career
Chandler Rome , Houston Chronicle June 1, 2019 Updated: June 2, 2019 6:14 p.m.

OAKLAND, Calif. — Wade Miley epitomizes every syllable of the word Southerner, sacrificing suave suits so many major leaguers wear for weathered jeans, camouflage hats and faded T-shirts. He often looks more prepared to patrol a pond or duck blind than a pitcher’s mound.

His twang tinges a clubhouse containing a plethora of personalities. The Astros employ players ranging from low-key to legendary. Miley meanders somewhere in the middle, a veteran with wounds from a winding road here.

“He’s the best,” said Jay Artigues, Miley’s college coach. “What you see is what you get with Wade. He’s as down to earth as they come. He treats the janitors the same way he treats the CEO. He doesn’t treat anybody different.”

Within an organization often commended for its cutting-edge evolution, Miley is a throwback. Pace-of-play pundits rejoice when he starts. Miley averages only 19 seconds between pitches, faster than any other starter in the majors.

He throws one pitch — a cutter — more than 50 percent of the time and dares opponents to diagnose it. In a data-focused sport so fixated on tendencies and deception, Miley’s arsenal is anything but a secret. Teams know precisely what Miley will do and, still, the southpaw succeeds.

“It just must be late,” manager A.J. Hinch said of the pitch. “The hitter reactions are just that it’s late. Everyone knows it’s coming. They’re not surprised by it. They’re ready for it, but it still has some late action and he’s able to locate it.”

Miley’s 3.25 ERA is 12th lowest among American League starters. Only Justin Verlander possesses a lower one among the Astros starters.

Signed on an otherwise nondescript one-year, $4.5 million deal in January, Miley has made himself a mainstay in the middle of an overhauled rotation. His rise is rapid, a cutter-contrived comeback for a man who, two years ago, thought he was done.

“Wade’s approach to baseball is that he wants to win,” reliever Will Harris said. “He’s not going out there to see how many guys he can strike out; he’s not going out there to throw a no-hitter.

“He’s going out there to win the game and, I think, on a winning team that’s a good recipe. We’re set up to win games, so if you have a starting pitcher like him that goes out there with that mentality, I think it’s a good recipe for success for everybody involved.”

Wade and Katie Miley considered the end. Reaching rock bottom requires some sort of reassessment, so the couple cautiously planned for a post-baseball life.

“Did we make enough money where we can kind of hang out for a little while?” they thought during the winter of 2017.

Their son, Jeb, was hardly 6 months old. When he was born, Wade dreamed of bringing the boy to a major league clubhouse, allowing him to grow up with remembrance and reverence of the game. If there was any one impetus spurring the southpaw to sustain his career, this was it.

“Wade’s a fighter,” Artigues said. “He has a lot of pride. He told me in the offseason that the next team that gives him a chance, he was going to make the most of it.”

Miley’s competitiveness is contagious and the ability is apparent. Teammates and coaches knew that. Finishing second in National League Rookie of the Year voting and garnering an All-Star appearance in 2012 does not happen by accident.


“I try to go out and bust ass every time I take the ball,” Miley said. “It was tough getting beat down for two straight years. It was hard. The media, the fans, the people. You hear that stuff. I don’t pay much attention to that stuff, I try not to let it bother me, but you hear it. It was embarrassing. It was like ‘I’m this bad.’”

Wade lingered as a free agent. Why any team would seek him was a legitimate question. Two terrible seasons in Baltimore ended with a 5.75 ERA.

“I was just scared of the (strike) zone for the most part,” Miley said. “In a way, scared of contact. I’m a contact guy and I was pitching away from contact.

“There was so much damage being done when I threw it over the plate, so I was trying to be perfect with it. I didn’t have confidence in anything.”


In 2017, he led the major leagues with 93 walks. On July 25, in a fit of rage while the Tampa Bay Rays rocked him for a five-run second inning, he made up a pitch mid-start in a last-ditch effort to harness his careening career. Miley gripped his slider and threw it as hard as he could. The baseball cut surprisingly well.

“Never thought about throwing a cutter,” Miley said. “Just because of how I threw across my body, I didn’t think it would work. I just did it. That’s how frustrating of a year 2017 was. I was making (stuff) up out there as I went. Just trying to figure out how to get outs.”

The cutter came and went. After four or five successful starts tossing it in 2017, teams keyed in and started not swinging when they recognized it was coming.

Miley’s inexperience with the pitch left him incapable of commanding it in the strike zone. His season ended as it started — poorly — and his future was in doubt. The Milwaukee Brewers signed Miley to a minor league contract in February 2018, allowing him one chance to rekindle what seemed so lost.

A visit back to Louisiana and longtime pitching coach Chris Westcott allowed Miley the opportunity. He learned how to locate the cutter to all four quadrants of the zone. Using it to induce weak contact and complement his quick pace seemed a no-brainer. Infielders love pitchers who work fast. Umpires, too.

“And the hitters hate it,” Artigues said. “So let’s pitch it at a great tempo.”

Artigues instituted two rules at Southeastern Louisiana: pitchers can never turn their back to the catcher or leave the dirt on the mound. Miley still adheres to both religiously.

“He’s just such a competitive guy that he wants to come right at you,” Artigues said. “I think it really helps him because, hey, don’t think about the next pitch, just get after him and execute it. It eliminates overthinking on the mound for some guys. The catcher puts a number down and Wade is really good about calling what the catcher puts down, and he goes after it.”

The Astros cannot sign a pitcher without the industry wondering if and how they will change him. Gerrit Cole and Collin McHugh were reinvented to rousing success. Charlie Morton, too.

In Milwaukee, Miley was sensational. He suffered a groin injury during spring training but, when he returned in the second half, was one of the National League’s most reliable arms. He threw to a 2.57 ERA in 80⅔ innings and made four postseason starts.

One ended after one batter, Craig Counsell’s famous counter to the Los Angeles Dodgers platoon-happy lineup in the NLCS. Miley received 25 baseball cards from Major League Baseball for the occasion — commemorating the first man to start two playoff series games in a row.

All of his Brewers success stemmed from the cutter. Signing with Houston offered an initial hint that, perhaps, the team of Astros analysts and baseball operations found another wrinkle to exploit.

“I think there’s maybe this misconception sometimes, from my point of view, with some of this stuff,” Harris said. “It’s not so much about ‘Stop doing this and you need to grip the ball this way and change your delivery.’ It’s more so like ‘Hey, you’re really good when you do this. Let’s try to do that more often.’”

Harris was Miley’s main advocate to general manager Jeff Luhnow. Though they knew of one another through mutual friends, the two Louisianans first formally met in 2013 and lived together in 2014, Miley’s last season as a Diamondback.

Enticing Miley to Houston was easy.

He harbored no apprehension at the possibility of changing his approach or arsenal. “Change is great,” Miley said.

Instead, Miley is throwing his cutter more than he did last season with the Brewers. The pitch darts inside to most righthanded hitters, resulting in feeble contact to the left side of the infield. Opponents who put it in play do so at an average exit velocity of 89.2 mph.

“Just hit it on the ground,” Miley said. “I told (Alex Bregman) from day one, be ready over there, pal. Wear a cup. It’s going to be coming in hot.”