The Athletics are planning to promote pitching prospect Mason Miller, reports Matt Kawahara of the San Francisco Chronicle. It seems possible that Miller will join the team today and could make his major league debut tomorrow. He’s not yet on the 40-man roster and will require a corresponding move.
Miller, 24, was selected by the A’s in the third round of the 2021 draft, making his professional debut with a few Complex League outings shortly after that draft. He logged just six innings there, but Baseball America ranked him the #16 prospect in the system going into 2022, largely based on his work in college. He was then limited by a shoulder strain in 2022, not making his season debut until late August. He made one appearance in the Complex League, three in High-A and then two in Triple-A. He finished the year with a combined 3.86 ERA in 14 innings over those games.
It was a very limited sample, but he did rack up 25 strikeouts, exactly half of the 50 batters he faced, while keeping his walks down to a 6% rate. He was then sent to get some extra work in the Arizona Fall League, tossing 16 2/3 innings there with a 3.24 ERA, racking up another 20 punchouts. Based on that strong-but-limited showing, BA bumped him to #4 in the system coming into this year. FanGraphs was perhaps even more bullish, giving Miller the #98 spot on their preseason list of the top 100 prospects in the league. Both outlets highlight Miller’s velocity, with his fastball able to hit triple digits, while also complimenting his slider and changeup. BA adds that he was planning to re-introduce a cutter in 2023, a pitch he had been avoiding as part of his rehab.
This year, Miller started out with a Double-A appearance, allowing two earned runs over 3 2/3 innings, but striking out eight opponents. He then got bumped to Triple-A, where he tossed five shutout innings with 11 punchies. By all accounts, Miller clearly has electric stuff and great results, but in very small samples. His entire professional career consists of 28 2/3 innings in the minors and those 16 2/3 frames in the AFL, adding up to 45 1/3. He did log 239 innings in college, but it’s still unusual for a club to fast-forward a player’s rise through the minors like this. That being said, Miller seems to have excellent stuff and might be ready to get big league hitters out right now.
The A’s have been toying with using a six-man rotation this year, in part to help Shintaro Fujinami adjust from the once-a-week pitching schedule preferred in Japan to the five-day rotation that’s more common in North America. He’s been joined by Kyle Muller, JP Sears, James Kaprielian, Ken Waldichuk and Adam Oller so far, though Oller made two long relief outings before getting his first start of the year last week. He was rocked for seven earned runs in just 2 1/3 innings in that start and was optioned to the minors shortly after. It seems his struggles have perhaps opened an opportunity for Miller to make his MLB debut. The A’s weren’t expected to compete this year and are off to a 3-14 start, giving them little reason not to see what they have in Miller.
Now that Opening Day has moved into the rearview mirror, it won’t be possible for Miller to reach a full year of service time. A baseball season is 187 days long but a player needs just 172 days on the active roster or injured list to accrue a full year. With the season now 20 days in, Miller would come up just shy of that one year mark even if he stays up for good. The new collective bargaining agreement has a path for players to get a full year of service time anyway, though that only applies to those who cracked two of the preseason top 100 lists at Baseball America, MLB Pipeline or ESPN. Miller made the FanGraphs list but none of those other three, meaning he doesn’t have a path to a full service year in 2023.
Image courtesy of USA Today Sports.
Miller is talented. A’s need to keep promoting their young talent.
Can hardly wait … as I’m sure of all a’s fans everywhere (both of them!)
Knee Slapper!
Don’t bother. It’s his childish Copy & Paste response to every A’s article. The height of his discourse. Just click on the Mute button.
Vota boom.
Them K/9 numbers tho
Has Tommy John written all over it.
Mason Miller…. now there’s a name worthy of the trades rubric!
Who’s next, Plummer Carpenter?
Cooper Farrier.
Fletcher Smith.
Archer Potter
You guys linked the wrong Mason Miller
now that makes sense that link shows a pretty lousy pitcher in college
He barely has innings in minors that was a pretty accelerated ladder climb for him. I am not sure his numbers show he is ready for that large jump but looking at the A’s they cannot get worse.
As they often do
Why is it you guys only talk bad about the A’s when they’re bad. But when they are good you guys never talk about them. The A’s are in the top three of all time for being how successful they are. They can’t spend money but yet still manage to make the playoffs.They find gems all the time and your teams trade for them. They must be doing something right.
They do a lot of things right, Athletics’ Supporter.
Baseball just isn’t one of them.
All the best.
I think they use Sport Reference’s auto-linker. I also think MLB TR uses WordPress from what I remember in some of their previous applications when they were looking for writers, and WordPress is supported by their autolinker.
A’s GM is such a joke. So if he gets smacked around he gets sent down the next day.
How? They have no money but still manage to make the playoffs every three years. How can they keep players with no money? How can they keep players with zero attendance? Let’s see you do better.
no money?? john fisher made $64 million off of the A’s alone in 2022 alone.
the A’s have money. they just choose not to spend any and continually fleece their fanbase. hence why they have no more fans.
john fisher is just a selfish billionaire who only cares about his art and real estate portfolio.
Did I say the owners didn’t have money? No I didn’t the team has no money so tell me how they are supposed to spend money that they don’t have? They get their money through attendance and nobody is going to games. So yea tell me how the Gm can work with that.
lol he made $64 million off of the A’s in 2022 alone. the A’s have money regardless if people show up through television and sponsorship deals. pull your head out of you @ss. the A’s have money and decide to fleece their fans and the city of Oakland. wake up
the A’s were the 5th MOST PROFITABLE FRANCHISE IN ALL OF MLB in 2022 but yeah they have money. lmao
The owners have that money and when are they going to let the A’s spend it? Again the A’s don’t have the money the owners do. Why do u think A’s fans have been begging for new owners?
and again, the A’s, as a business alone, profited $64 million last year, 5th best in all of baseball. Fisher has been doing this for nearly 20 years.
The Mets lost nearly $150 million dollars last year. Yet they have a $360m payroll. I’m not sure what you’re not understanding here.
like, you understand no one has to show up at the gate for them to still make money right? they have a massive television contract worth $50 million a year alone
20 something professional innings? Wow. Numbers definitely seem to say there’s talent there, not sure I understand the hurry though
Aside from the obvious that their rotation is a mess, given his injury history they probably prefer that he put the additional wear on his arm while in the big leagues rather than in the minors. His stuff is too good for most minor league hitters to handle and there is nothing to be gained by having him use up his arm dominating at that level.
This was a sensible response. Makes some sense. Thanks
Well, we have the worst team ERA in the league by a huge margin.
Also, until the GM gets his real estate deal they just want to tread water and test out some of the more promising fringe talent. As I understand it, the goal is to time the development of the most promising talent with the construction date of the new stadium (e.g. calling them up 2-3 years before it’s done), signing a bunch of free agents to supplement this talent the year the new stadium is up, then selling the franchise off while the team looks like a perennial playoff contender with inflated revenue projections.
Wondering whom might get Cut off of their 40-Man roster to make room for Miller ?
Amongst the Pitchers, perhaps Adam Oller or Jeurys Familia ?
Amongst the Hitters, perhaps Dermis Garcia or Jonah Bride?
Dermis may not get any At Bats this year, as he is behind Aguilar and Rooker, and probably could be replaced with Jordan Diaz as a 1B/DH option.
Jonah Bride is a Singles-hitter playing 3rd Base. Not sure where he would get his At Bats from. I’d rather see Jordan Diaz or Zack Gelof get the opportunity before Jonah. They just have higher ceilings with the Bat.
Could another option would be to Move either Domingo Acevedo or Seth Brown from the 10-Day Injured List to the 60-Day injured list? Not sure how that works.
Is that the right Mason Miller link?
Nope. They linked the wrong one again
Thought I was going crazy because it was a younger kid, so looked the right age (not like they linked some 50+ year old guy of the same name), but wasn’t seeing any minor league history haha.
baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=mil…
If an A’s prospect is called up and no one is there to see him called up – is he really called up?
Hey now, I’m sure the 5,000 fans that keep showing up to the home games will be cheering for him.
The link is to Martin Milner and he’s kickin’ that Vette hard on Route 66 trying to get to Oakland.
In other news A’s are going to show their disgust for the way the A’s are run by showing up in droves and lining the owners pockets with money. Sounds like a sure fire winning strategy. Sounds like the same backward strategy they use to put a team on the field. What happened to the Public School System in Oakland? Toxic Cloud maybe? LMAO
That was Ohio where there are far fewer safety regulations… was that the cause of this confused post?
Kid good luck. Be prepared to get hammered then DFA’d by the A’s. That’ their M.O..
I was just reading the article in the NY Times about how historically lousy the A’s are – currently 3-14 and then noticed that my team, the Giants, are 5-10 – lol
He’s already been traded to the dodgers for two high A relievers and a box of 30oz bats.
Please don’t use the remaining brain cell on this stupid joke. Let see you be the GM and put a playoff team on the field. Do you know how many playoffs they been to? Not only that third most World Series in all of baseball. Just imagine if they had the Rangers cap space nobody would touch them
The coliseum is the worst venue in all of sports and the San Jose Giants field a more fun team in a better place to watch a game. Please don’t waste your remaining brain cell convincing yourself otherwise.
Athletics’ Supporter…
The A’s suck sour buttermilk, boss. Sorry.
All the best.
Nobody denies that , you really thought you were the only one? Ones wrong with people on this site