The Orioles are desperate enough to try to improve their situation in their starting rotation that just about anybody seems like he could be an upgrade. That apparently includes Seattle’s Wade Miley. Jon Heyman, on Today’s Knuckleball, reports that the Orioles are “taking a hard look” at Miley.
If they picked Saturday to take a look at Miley, they must have come away impressed. Miley held the Cubs to one run on one hit in seven innings and struck out nine batters in the process. That is a season high in strikeouts. That’s the good news for Miley. The bad news for Miley is that outing lowered his ERA to 4.98.
Miley, a 29-year-old left-handed pitcher, is making $6 million this season and is signed for about $9 million for next season. There’s also a $12 million team option for the 2018 season.
One thing you can say in Miley’s favor is that he’s at least sort of eating innings, averaging about six innings per game started. The Orioles aren’t even managing that far too often. If I heard the stat right earlier, they have 49 games where their starting pitcher has gone fewer than five innings, most in MLB. It’s very nearly half of the Orioles games.
Miley has logged at least 193.2 innings in each of the last four seasons. That includes his 2012 rookie season where he only started 29 games, was an All-Star, and placed second in the Rookie of the Year voting. His two best seasons were his first two MLB seasons, when he was working in the Diamondbacks rotation.
There are home run problems to consider. Miley has allowed 18 in his 112 innings this season. It’s not very likely that he would come to Camden Yards and have that problem see much improvement. On the other hand, with nearly a 46% ground ball rate, maybe he could make something work out.
He is just the sort of crappy lefty who dominates the Orioles. In fact, he did so back on May 17, shutting them out for six innings in a game the Mariners won, 10-0. Maybe the Orioles could make one of those guys work in their favor for once. Probably not.
As Miley is neither a rental nor very expensive (in dollars), this is not the worst name that will come up as connected to the Orioles over the next couple of days. Should they trade for him? I guess that depends on what it costs them in players. Heyman offers no speculation about who the Mariners might want to target from the Orioles.
Don’t get your hopes up. Probably nothing will happen, and even if it does, Miley might not actually be good enough to make a difference.