Diamondbacks righty Shelby Miller has hired Roc Nation Sports and agent Kyle Thousand to represent him, Liz Mullen of the Sports Business Journal reports on Twitter.
Miller, who’s still just 26 years of age, underwent Tommy John surgery in mid-May. So long as his recovery goes well, he ought to be ready to go at some point in the middle of the 2018 season.
Through 22 innings, Miller had shown some signs of bouncing back from a rough 2016 campaign. In particular, the right-hander was working at a career-high 95.4 mph average fastball velocity and 9.6% swinging-strike rate — though he also allowed a dozen walks to go with twenty strikeouts.
Arizona will have to think hard about whether to tender Miller a contract, though odds are the team will deem it a worthwhile risk. Miller won’t command much of a raise on the $4.7MM salary he commanded for 2017, and he’ll still be controllable for another season through the arb process.
If the D-Backs do indeed offer Miller arbitration, then, the club will effectively retain an option year at what could be an appealing rate of pay for Miller’s age-28 season in 2019. While the team looks to have a strong starting five on hand regardless, given the emergence of Zack Godley, maintaining depth and holding onto Miller’s upside will surely hold appeal. Plus, Patrick Corbin is slated for free agency after the 2018 campaign. And if the Snakes do end up with a rotation logjam, they can always utilize extra arms as trade pieces.
As always, you can find up-to-date MLB agency information at MLBTR’s Agency Database.
Its unfortunate. Despite being a solid starter, even in ’17 (peripherals were decent), he’ll always be remembered for that god awful trade.
So far, the best player involved in that trade was Inciarte. Swanson still needs to prove himself.
I feel the same way about when the Phillies traded Gavin Floyd and Gio Gonzalez away for Freddy Garcia.
That’s nowhere near as bad as the dbacks trade
Needs an agent for retirement
He seems like a non-tender to me. Best case health scenario, he’s back by about June. Any setback pushes him into the All – Star Break, and that doesn’t account for his poor performance over the past two years
No shot they non tender him. He’ll be making under 5 mil next year and if he only pitches half a season he won’t get much of a raise beyond that for 2019. That’s about 11 mil or so for a year and a half of a capable back end of the rotation guy at least with the upside to be better than that. No shot they let him walk.
I’m surprised he didn’t go with Scott Boras who is a master at making marginal talent seem legit.
Boras? He generally represents the best players in the game. Also I don’t know how agents operate, so maybe I’m mistaken, but last time I checked the owners signed the contracts and the paychecks.