What to Expect from Wade Miley in 2024

Wade Miley is not your average pitcher. He has never possessed the 95-mph velocity common in today’s game, but he’s managed to build a solid 13-year major-league career on soft contact. When paired with the exceptional Brewers infield defense in 2023, he posted an ERA of 3.14 and a WHIP of 1.14 over 120 ⅓ innings, the third-best season of his career by ERA+. But how, exactly, does he do it?

He’s been using a cutter as his primary weapon since his first stint with the Brewers in 2018, and it was remarkably effective this past year, accumulating a Run Value of 9. (You could call it the pitch that made Wade Miley wily, if you were in a certain mood.) In terms of placement, he likes to keep his cutter close to the glove-side part of the zone, jamming righty hitters and breaking away from lefties. 

This is a key characteristic, because it averaged a velocity of just 87.1 mph, meaning pitches placed middle-middle would have a good chance of resembling meatballs and hitters would surely let it eat. In fact, a cutter enthusiast whose style is in stark contrast to Miley's would be his teammate, Corbin Burnes. He averages 94.4 mph with his, more than a standard deviation faster than the league average and over seven ticks faster than Miley's. They were more frequently placed in the heart of the zone, which gave him higher whiff and strikeout rates. Nonetheless, by Run Value per 100 pitches, both pitchers actually had evenly matched cutters, a great example of how Miley is able to adapt his pitching style to best suit his current abilities.

Miley’s Cutter Placement                                                                                                        Burnes's Cutter Placement

Another pitch of note for Miley was his four-seam fastball, a pitch that posted an opposing batting average of just .198. This pitch was very much feast-or-famine, as despite a deflated batting average, the opposing slugging was .453, with an even higher expected slugging average of .560. While placed in roughly the same area as his cutter with a little more height, it didn’t seem to have the necessary stuff to generate the same soft contact. Opponents had a hard-hit rate of 47.7%.

Finally, while whiffs (18.8%, 5th percentile) and strikeouts (16.1%, eighth percentile) were rare this season, one pitch that put up decent numbers was his slider. While used sparingly and thrown fewer than 100 times, it had a whiff rate of 35.7% and a strikeout rate of 30.8%. It also had the highest put-away rate in his arsenal, twice as high as his cutter. 

When looking at his Savant page, one can see that he was not only good at limiting damage in 2023, but one of the best. His hard-hit rate of 31.3% was in the top 7 percent of the league, and his average exit velocity of 87.3 mph and ground-ball rate of 47.4% were both in the top quartile for those respective stats. If you’re wondering how a guy who tops out at 90 mph can have an ERA+ of 137, that’s how.

But can Miley repeat this success? A key consideration is that Miley’s xERA of 4.33 was significantly higher than his actual ERA. This is largely due to the fact that he missed so few bats, and that (therefore) he was partially dependent on his infield for his success. While FIP is a woefully incomplete evaluative tool for pitchers who don't chase strikeouts, it’s also worth noting that his 4.69 was higher than in any full season since 2017, in which he pitched to a 5.61 ERA. This shouldn’t matter too much as of now, since the Brewers haven’t made any monumental defensive subtractions from their infield, but in the event that players like Willy Adames or Brice Turang are replaced by more offense-focused players, Miley could see a drastic decline in his stats. Since he won't be able to hit the local Planet Fitness and tack on an extra 10 mph of juice to every pitch this offseason, he’ll have to find a way to make this soft-contact approach work--or suffer the consequences.

Miley’s decision to opt out of his $10-million mutual option only to re-sign with the team for $7 million and yet another mutual option in 2025 was a curious one. However, his new deal does include $2.5 million in innings-based incentives and the option in 2025 will be for $12 million with a $1.5 million buyout, so maybe he’s playing the long game. There is also a possibility that, given the vast amount of free-agent starting pitching talent on today’s market, Miley’s venture into the open market didn’t go as well as he had anticipated. 

With the whole gang returning from last year (with the exceptions of Brandon Woodruff and Julio Teheran), it seems as though the Brewers will once again have one of the more imposing starting rotations in the league. But with division rivals like the St. Louis Cardinals making big moves in free agency to acquire Kyle Gibson, Lance Lynn, and Sonny Gray, Milwaukee might need more than just Miley to stay competitive. His services will be much-appreciated, unless we see a regression toward his expected stats in 2023, but without a dominant power pitcher like last season’s version of Woodruff, the team might be left at home come the postseason.

What do you think? Can Miley and his cutter keep slicing through lineups as he rounds the bend between 35 and 40? Let's chop it up.