Wade Miley Was Way Ahead of You, Rob Manfred

At Baseball Savant, an intrepid web surfer can find leaderboards for Pitch Tempo--in essence, how quickly all pitchers with a certain number of total pitches thrown go about their work. The page divides pitches up, with one median time given for occasions when the bases are empty, and another given for when there are runners on. It also lists the frequency with which pitchers work either "fast" (fewer than 15 total seconds between consecutive pitches) or "slow" (more than 30 seconds).

We should pause, before going further, to clarify those numbers. Obviously, without runners on base, the pitch timer only allows 15 seconds between pitches. That countdown only begins again when the pitcher gets the ball back from his catcher, though, so it's not really just 15 seconds. There are also miniature stoppages for things like foul balls, players being hit with foul tips or backswings, and batter timeouts. When there's at least one runner on base, the pitcher can step off the mound a couple of times per at-bat. That can mean that, even with the timer, many pitches happen somewhere close to 30 seconds after the previous one. A few still take longer than 30 seconds.

That's not true with Wade Miley on the mound, though. This season, only three pitchers who have thrown at least 100 total pitches have had a faster tempo than Miley with the bases empty. Old friend Brent Suter is on that list. Phillies right-hander Taijuan Walker is the only starter who works faster than Miley, on average. However, even that doesn't tell the full story. There are 14 qualifying pitchers who work "fast" more often than Miley, meaning that he's letting the game find its rhythm. He doesn't rush to fire off pitches within a few seconds. He just has a naturally quick cadence: get the ball, get the pitch call, fire. 

With runners on base, much changes for most pitchers. For Miley, practically nothing does. No hurler has worked faster with men on base this season than Miley. No pitcher has worked "fast" a higher percentage of the time than Miley's 55.4 percent, though that's well down from his 86.4 percent when there's no one aboard. He's still not rushing, but nor will he be slowed down by the stress and complication of baserunners. He just keeps going about his work.

It's instructive to compare Miley to both the fastest (Suter) and the slowest (Houston's Luis Garcia) worker in the league, using not only their average numbers, but the distribution of their individual times between offerings. In the graphic below, note the red spray to the right of each stopwatch. Those show the frequency of various times between pitches.

The gist: Miley works in a broader range of tempos than does Suter, but he also changes less when runners get on base. Suter likes to use his tempo as part of his attack on hitters. He wants to force the issue. He's trying to make them feel uncomfortable. Miley isn't really doing that. He's in a truly natural rhythm. His just happens to be very quick. He'll let the game dictate the flow as needed, but he's going to stay focused on executing pitches and getting outs.

It probably only hurts people like Suter and García to have the whole league working on a countdown clock. That compresses what García prefers to do, and it makes what Suter wants to do less foreign and less frustrating for hitters. It doesn't affect Miley at all. He's been this pitcher all along. From 2021-22, he was the fastest worker in baseball, and his average times have changed less than those of other quick workers with the implementation of the timer this year. The league has made a rule that forces other pitchers to change, but Miley was ahead of the evolutionary curve.