The Diamondbacks have scheduled right-hander Shelby Miller for at least one more Triple-A start, which Nick Piecoro of the Arizona Republic says will leave the 25-year-old unable to accrue enough days on the active roster this year to reach four full years of MLB service.
Miller is sitting at 3.133 on his service clock at present, says Piecoro. That means he would need to return to the major league roster by Thursday to reach 172 days and move from the 3+ to the 4+ arbitration class. Miller had been on track to qualify for free agency after the 2018 season. Now, it seems, the Diamondbacks will control him for 2019 as well.
The Snakes demoted Miller to Triple-A as he scuffled through an abysmal campaign. He has lasted just 69 1/3 frames in 14 big league starts and has been tagged with a 7.14 ERA on the year. That’s far from what the team expected when it traded a talented trio of players to add him over the winter.
Arizona will still need to tender Miller an arb contract this fall to retain him, of course. Miller is earning $4.35MM this year, his first season of eligibility. He won’t command much of a raise given his struggles, but will still earn a fairly significant salary.
Diamondbacks chief baseball officer Tony La Russa said that the team’s handling of Miller was not tied to service time. “I don’t know if it’s true or not,” La Russa said of the calculation of service days presented by Piecoro.
While Arizona obviously has ample cause to ask Miller to work things out at Triple-A, it is fair to note that he has been much better there. Over his 46 frames, Miller carries a 3.52 ERA and — more importantly — has recorded 10.0 K/9 against just 1.8 BB/9.
Yeah I wouldn’t expect La Russa and Stewart to grasp complicated front office concepts like service time.
what would you know about service time. why are you not in a front office somewhere.
He’s too busy bashing the keys on his computer.
you do know it’s kind of part of La Russa’s job to know abut these sort of things, right?
Miller’s arb status directly impacts how much money the Dbacks are going to owe in payroll next season…
so yeah, if you’re a Dbacks fan, that answer should worry you
Actually, what worries me is that you are dumb enough to think LaRussa is being serious. He is playing possum in order to not be questioned by the players union or Miller’s agent. C’mon Petrie, get a clue.
this is the same front office that didn’t understand international signing rules…
Normally, I’d agree with the FO person playing dumb idea, but here, i’m not so sure.
that’s a pitifully weak defense, honestly
“he’s only acting dumb!”
if he was just trying to cover his you-know-what he could have just said the team wasn’t convinced he’s sorted out his mechanical issues, which is something the Union can’t challenge because player develop is the purview of the teams themselves
if Miller files a grievance over it, fortuitous ignorance is not a defense an arbitrator will accept… so if he’s just playing dumb, he’s not even doing that particularly intelligently…
Exactly. Whether LaRussa is playing dumb or not, the issue really is that LaRussa has been so inept in the front office that these kind of jokes not only can be made, but they can be believed by many to be true.
Bashing his keys, sure, but he’s not wrong. It’s embarrassing that La Russa doesn’t know, and if he truly does, it’s probably even more embarrassing that he responded how he did. Worst front office in baseball right now.
How are you actually defending La Russas statement? It’s common knowledge in and out of baseball how service time works.
Haha no it’s not. To you and others who visit this site sure, but the masses aka casual fans-their concern isn’t service time nor do they understand it.
What a dumb comment.
They know what they’re doing but can’t admit it
Maybe LaRussa playing dumb is part of the long con to make the league office believe he actually isn’t playing with service time.
But, most likely, probably, Shelby is still bad and belongs in AAA at this point,
La Russa was an awesome manager and I loved watching Stewart pitch but holycrap do they suck at running an organization. Have anymore 1st-round picks you want to send to the Braves?
Oh wow. The D-Backs are doing something smart! Progress!!
It’s an accident. La Russa wasn’t even aware of it.
He’s not allowed to say he’s aware of it
Exactly.. Like the criminal defense lawyer who gets up there and swears up and down his client is a fine and upstanding citizen, until he gets off the hook and then the guy goes out and murders someone else and the lawyer just shrugs his shoulders.. It’s not his fault he lied thru his teeth for the dude…
Yeah just like every top prospect suddenly becomes MLB ready right after the team secures a 7th year of control.
There is zero need to play games with Miller and his clock. He still is not ready to return to the big leagues as it is. At the rate he is going, he’ll be lucky to come up before mid-September, and even then it will be legitimate to ask if he has actually earned the call back.
How about being accountable and understand when you are not getting the job done at the major league level, you might get sent to AAA.???
one more year to try to save a bad trade!
TLR is too busy saving stray cats to calculate service time or know what constitutes a valid MLB trade.
A commenter here on another post brought this up yesterday. If the writers would read more comments they would have had a nice story to break the day with. Goes to show that the everyday commenter will always be a day ahead of the “experts”.
Ok, so the ownership scuttled a trade that would send Miller away because of the optics. But no one thought the same optics would apply to demoting Miller?
They scuttled a trade because they’d be selling extremely low on a player with a talented track record and a relatively low salary. Basic economical principles that this front office has consistently displayed it does not understand.
Apparently there are some posters with more baseball knowledge than LaRussa. Send your resume into the DBacks and see what response you get.
Doesn’t seem to take much these days. No reason to send our resumes in though; the DBacks don’t seem to value that kind of thing.
Don’t forget to include your amount of “grit”
Appeal to authority fallacy ftw
Thanks for confirming my point.
That you don’t have one?
Exactly how many WS rings do you have? Like it or not, LaRussa has them which is why he has the gig. You and I have no idea how ownership operates in Arizona.
Thanks for playing and keep the insults to yourself.
exactly how many WS Rings does La Russa have as an exec?
that’s right, as many as you and me combined
And how many years of baseball experience do you have? That’s right, as many as this whole board put together.
Why don’t you shed some light on how the Dbacks ownership works? Because frankly that seems to be the problem over the last 8 years or so. Giving Hall an 8 yr extension will only solidify the mediocrity. Hopefully the Dbacks will make good on their threat to leave.
I also believe Miller still has two more option years remaining after 2016.
Glass half full: Makes sense. Get the year back(and maybe help the walk rate while doing it)and hope you get what you initially traded so much for: three decent years of Shelby Miller.
This assumes La Russa understands that aspect. He and Stewart’s track record say other wise. But yes they would have an extra year to recoup value on Miller.
where is scottaz and his 94 win dbacks?
Or an extra year of control to sell to someone else when/if they trade him. It’s a valuable selling point if he can reestablish himself as even a mid-rotation guy.
The national media always has some story about the diamondbacks that makes them look worse than they already do. I know that two recent stories were not true at all. First, the story that came out about Stewart not know the rules to a trade and another gm telling him so and also the story about ownership telling the front office not to accept a trade from Miami for miller. Both stories are completely false.
Wouldn’t it be responsible journalism to try and contact Stewart and get his side of things? This has already happened with someone I wouldn’t expect that behavior from. Peter gammons reported about the Zeigler trade bring half the value it could have been and writing that he did that because he is friends the dombrowski or how ever you spell the red sox gms name. Gammons later backed away from his tweets about tlrs integity. That was a so ridiculous to suggest he would in any way damage his chances of winning and do anything to harm this franchise for a friendship with another gm. Complete bs. Makes we question every story that anybody writes about the dbacks organitation.
“Me not know what service time is”
-Tony La Russa
Sure Tony. You also didn’t know Big Mac was juicing right? Haha
So if Miller is stuck in the same arbitration class next year, does that mean they can try to tender him a contract at the same salary as this year or even *gasp* get him to take a pay cut?
Only in baseball (and perhaps the other major sports) can you easily get a raise after an entire year of lousy job performance.