Diamondbacks righty Shelby Miller has been cleared of any new damage to his surgically replaced ulnar collateral ligament, Jack Magruder of The Sports Xchange reports on Twitter. That’s the news the club was hoping for when it sent Miller’s MRI results to surgeon Neal ElAttrache.
Miller, 27, has only made four starts since working back from Tommy John surgery. The alarm bells went off recently when he was forced out of his most recent outing with elbow tightness, though it emerged thereafter that there was cause for optimism.
It’s anyone’s guess how much time Miller will miss, but Magruder notes that the veteran right-hander will remain on ice for at least another seven days. At this point, he has only been down for a week, but his ultimate rehab timeline will surely depend upon how his elbow responds to the rest and how quickly he’s able to resume throwing.
While Miller was tagged for 19 earned runs in his first 15 innings on the year, he also ran up 19 strikeouts and was pumping mid-nineties heaters. Despite the struggles, then, the organization would surely like for him to be working out the kinks in major-league games. After all, the D-Backs will need to maximize all their resources for the stretch run in a tough NL West.
It seems Miller will be replaced by Clay Buchholz, reversing the DL/rotation swap those two hurlers made in late June. While the Snakes would surely prefer to have both at full health, the tag-team approach is at least keeping the rotation filled out so far.
So basically he just sucks
Way to stay classy
I bet if we compare his salary, stats, life and attitude to yours , he doesn’t suck that bad.
Are you his mother?
But still needs to be charged with the damage hes done to arizonas playoff hopes when they acquired him from the braves.
Didn’t Arizona make the playoffs last season? I don’t think the Braves did. Not a good trade for Arizona by any means, but not the franchise crippling one that people make it out to be.
How far did Arizona get in the playoffs?
Farther than the Braves.
I believe they played Colorado in the WC game
I could have sworn they beat them.
That trade just keeps looking better for the Braves.
Arizona will make the playoffs again this year and Atlanta will not….Next year aint looking to great foe ATL either with what the Phillies/Mets are about to do this winter.
Yea I mean Inciante/Swanson are the #7-#8 hitters pitchers fear in the league the most….furthermore combined they have 14 home runs!! not 13 but 14….yep just keeps getting better
You’re comparing a team that was in a full out rebuild during the 2016 and 2017 seasons, a.k.a the Braves, to a team that made the trade looking to “add their last missing piece” in 2016, a.k.a the D-Backs..
With that being said, I’d REALLY hope the D-Backs had a better season than the Braves in 2016 and 2017, if not well then, that would just be pretty pathetic…
The facts are the trade just hasn’t worked out for Arizona. Instead of adding their co-ace to team up with Greinke, they basically acquired nothing…They were originally targeting Mike Leake, but instead they ended up giving away Inciarte, Swanson, Blair, and they also took on Miller’s contract..Pretty sure I’d much rather have Leake, Swanson, Blair, and Inciarte…
All is not lost though, at least the D-Backs stuck to their guns and they didn’t trade away Pollack and Swanson, like the Braves originally wanted..
Then, the D-Backs ended up selling off Touki Toussaint to get rid of Arroyo’s contract, because they needed to create some more financial flexibility..So really, the trade might have also cost them Touki Toussaint, one of the most intriguing pitching prospects in the Majors..
Toussaint could still be the best of the bunch that the D-Backs gave away. His curve is flat out filthy, and his change-up just disappears as it heads towards the plate..
If anyone saw him pitch at the futures game, you could easily see the promise he shows. He’s a starting pitcher that routinely hits 95-97, and has two plus off-speed pitches..It wouldn’t at all suprise me to see Touki get a September call-up this year to help out the Braves bullpen..Similar to the roles Sale and Price held for the White Sox and Rays, respectively..
Regardless, the trade was a major setback for the D-Backs franchise. They lead to completely losing out on four big-time assets..A GG CF’er, one of the game’s top position player prospects, a top 50 pitching prospect, and eventually lead to having to sell off another top 100 pitching prospect..
Those are assets, that if used correctly, could have changed the future of this franchise TREMENDOUSLY!! Unfortunately, for D-Backs’ fans that didn’t happen…
What would really be a slap in the face would be Inciarte or Swanson hitting a walk-off HR to win the Wild Card game, if the two meet in the 1 game playoff birth..lol
@bravesfan88. Lol. Let’s take a look at Atlanta’s side of the ledger. Blair has an ERA over 8.00 in the majors and an ERA north of 6.00 in the minors. Atlanta got zero.
Swanson was supposed to be a sure fire All-Star and first ballot Hall of Farmer since he was a No. 1 overall pick. Instead, he’s a utility infielder. He’s been demoted to the minors, many Braves fans hate him, he’s been surpassed by Albies and Comargo, and he’s currently hitting in the .240s. No longer part of the future, except in the eyes of disillusioned fans like you, who think he’s still young and has “potential”. He’s a joke and the rest of the league knows it. Another failed No. 1 pick.
Inciarte has done a little, but he’s hitting in the .240s too. Is trending rapidly toward 4th OF status.
So, neither team got much and as an earlier commenter noted, the trade wasn’t nearly as lopsided as you would like to pretend it was.
Inciarte hit .304 with 200 hits and won a gold glove last year. He is under team control for many years at below market rate. Getting him alone made the trade lopsided in the Braves favor. Maybe not as much as people thought at first because Swanson has had his share of struggles but it definitely lopsided.
I’m no Braves fan, but I think Dansby Swanson is a pretty good shortstop, even with a 95 ops he’s still worth 2.2 bWAR
Yeah swanson is still a quality, young, controllable shortstop who’s improved. And inciarte is a very valuable player on a great deal. Don’t try to make that deal OK for the dbacks. It was horrid
I would say the trade(s) have become pretty lopsided…
June of 2015 the D-Backs got Phil Gosselin in exchange for Bronson Arroyo and Touki Toussaint.
That season Gosselin hit .311/.373/.500 with a 136 wRC+ (1.0 WAR) in 44 games, between the two teams. In 2016 he hit for a little above avg. and produced 0.5 WAR/ 80 wRC+. Then he was done – pretty much all minor league appearances and he is now on the bench for the Reds.
Bronson Arroyo did absolutely nothing for the Braves obviously.
Touki Toussaint has moved up the through the Braves system well. He just recently moved up to AAA. In 86 innings in AA this year, he has 107/36 K/BB. (11.20 K/9) 2.93 ERA, 3.54 FIP. He has one start in AAA and pitched outstanding. So I think that particular trade is obviously going to go the Braves way. Arizona got 1.5 wins over 2 years from a UTIL guy, and ATL has a future #2/3 starter for the long haul.
Then the Shelby Miller trade:
December of 2015 the D-Backs recieved Shelby Miller and Gabe Speier in exchange for Ender Inciarte, Aaron Blair, and Dansby Swanson.
Shelby Miller in 2016, went 3-12, 101 innings, 6.24 K/9, 6.15 ERA, 0.5 WAR. He only pitched 22 innings in 2017. And only 15 innings so far this year.
Gabe Speier never cracked MLB.
Ender Inciarte has been a defensive wizard for the Braves ever since. In 2016, he hit .291, and accumulated 3.2 WAR. In 2017 he hit .304 with 201 hits, good for 3.0 WAR. and this year he is struggling with the bat, but still batting a repectable .241 while still playing good D, good for 1.2 WAR so far.
Aaron Blair showed some promise, but never panned out for the Braves. Injuries and a constant up/down shuffling from the Braves limited him to do very much in MLB.
Dansby Swanson has made some improvements at the plate this year. However he still hasn’t made neccessary adjustments to consistantly move up the lineup. But his great defense this year as all but made up for it. I would agree that he is not where he needs to be in terms of production.
So while the Braves missed with Blair, and have not gotten what was exactly expected from Swanson, they still most definitely got the better end of the transactions with Arizona. They received a future TOR pitcher, and two outstanding defensive players, with Inciarte showing the ability to be an above avg. hitter. Arizona got 1 1/2 years of a UTIL player and a SP that has pitched a total of 138 innings in 3 years.
Your analysis is incredibly biased. You praise Touki Toussaint like crazy despite the fact that he has yet to play in the majors and then say Gabe Speier was just a guy that never cracked the majors. Gabe Speier was just used to acquire Jon Jay for Arizona, so you should really add that to your analysis.
You also missed another point with Arroyo. He was part of the REAL rip-off trade with the Dodgers. Alex Wood and Jose Peraza for Hector Olivera.
So any Braves fans that want to get an inflated ego about their front office should just look at that trade and see that sometimes it happens to everyone and just let this Shelby Miller thing die.
Eh, Touki just turned 22 this year… I think he is on track to make MLB pretty normally. I didn’t say he was Nolan Ryan. The avg age for a rookie in MLB is 24-25. So I dunno whats wrong with that.
My “analysis” was simply production vs. production. Them acquiring Jon Jay with one of the players is irrelevant… unless it was Bryce Harper or something. I’m talking PRODUCTION.
I have no inflated ego. Our front offices have mad a lot of terrible trades. But those 2 trades in 2015 were not one of em. Whether the Braves new any better or not. I don’t think anyone expected Shelby Miller to have pitched less than 200 total innings the past 3 years.
I’m pulling for Miller. But the Braves def won that trade when you look at production from the players involved.
Shouldn’t the blame lie with dave stewart and tony Larussa? Shelby Miller never asked to be traded from STL or ATL.
That’s good news but not even a healthy Shelby Miller is going to get them to the playoffs. He gets hurt so much that you’d think he played for the Angels.
They WANT him to work out the kinks at the ML level? I don’t think that makes sense.
Certainly doesn’t make sense for a team with playoff aspirations, no
They want him to be pitching in the majors rather than being hurt, is all I mean.
How about a move to the bullpen? Like Daniel Hudson
They simply need to minimize the damage he can inflict. If he is has to be on the 25 man, long man in the pen it is.
Really hope Shelby can get healthy, and finally turn it around. It’s a huge bummer how the last few years have turned out, especially after Miller and McDowell collectively helped Miller seemingly begin to reach his full potential..
Shame noone remembers he started out pretty good last year before going down. I was thinking he would be a perfect fit to help with walker going down this year (I think that was who went down, memory a little muddled atm)