White-knuckle time for hitters: Bryce Miller has a new pitch
Big Tex is a Big Innovator on the mound
After adding a multifaceted splitter and cutter to his repertoire, Bryce Miller isn’t done tinkering. “Big Tex” has been toying with a new pitch in his arsenal, inspired by new(ish) teammate Mike Baumann. Former Mariner Robbie Ray once praised George Kirby, saying Kirby is the quickest he’s seen at picking up new tricks since former teammate Zack Greinke, but Miller might give Kirby a run for his money. Miller asked Baumann to show him the grip Baumann uses for his spike curve, experimented with it a few times in the bullpen, and now has started to put the pitch into game action.
“He just throws that [spike curve] like every time,” said Miller, “so I was like, imma try that.”
“It was like a ten second conversation,” said Baumann, shaking his head, “and all of a sudden he was throwing it in games.”
“I threw it in the bullpen and I was like, that’s pretty good!” said Miller.
It might be appropriate to say Miller’s knuckle curve is just a further progression of his splitter, which has a varied movement profile that can both run and cut in addition to its drop, keeping batters off-balance. But while the splitter has extremely low spin—averaging about 840 rpm—the knuckle curve is a high-spin pitch, averaging around 2300 rpm. It’s similar, spin-wise, to the curveball Miller experimented with in 2023, which he eventually scrapped, but that was a slow, looping curve, coming in around 77-78 mph; this new knuckle curve averages 84-85 mph.
“It’s similar to like a gyro slider, but with more depth,” said Miller, who throws the pitch by coming up onto the seam with his index finger and using that grip to give the pitch its diving action. He studied Baumann’s grip frame by frame on the Edgertronic cameras, imitating it until he could throw it himself. Miller was inspired to make the change because he feels like his traditional (gyro) slider has “underperformed”; hitters are slugging over .600 off the pitch this year, and Miller was frustrated by the lack of swing-and-miss on the pitch, so he’s hoping the new curve, with its additional depth, can produce some more whiffs.
“It’s more of like a finish-count, like if I threw two splitters in a row, instead of them being able to sit soft-away, being able to go hard-underneath. So we’ll see.”
Miller debuted the new curveball against the Twins on June 29, throwing the pitch ten times, per Statcast (which has struggled to differentiate between Miller’s splitter/slider and the knuckle curve, which is why you might not have seen it labeled as such). Of those nine pitches, six of them were balls/hitters didn’t offer at the pitch, with one foul, two whiffs, and one out made on the pitch. But the knuckle curve doesn’t necessarily need to be a whiff-getter if it helps Miller set up his other pitches.
“I’m hoping it looks like a fastball, and then just drops,” said Miller, of how he wants the new pitch to interact with his other pitches. So far, the early returns seem like that might be happening. In the first inning of the Twins game, Miller threw a knuckle curve to Trevor Larnach, who didn’t offer at the pitch but did go after Miller’s next pitch, a perfectly-spotted four-seamer up in the zone, for an easy groundout. Miller did the same thing to Carlos Santana in the second, who spit on a low curve but then swung at a four-seam up in the zone for a strikeout. Miller’s first out on the pitch came three batters later, when he got Byron Buxton to go after the curve for an easy pop-out that got Miller a much-needed out after the Twins had scored an early run.
Miller really dug into the knuckle curve in the fourth, facing Minnesota’s lefty-heavy lineup a second time through. He went heavy on the curve against Max Kepler, who had doubled off a first-pitch four-seamer his first time up, getting Kepler to chase the first pitch again and immediately fall into a hole, allowing Miller to control the remainder of the at-bat:
Miller also threw several curves to the next batter, righty José Miranda, who’d hit an RBI single off Miller’s sinker in his first at-bat, battling Miller for seven pitches. The first pitch here reads as a ball but Miranda flinched after the pitch, although not enough for it to be ruled a swing. Still, this at-bat shows the work that needs to go into this pitch before it’s a reliable part of Miller’s arsenal: he needs to be able to throw it with consistent spin (2300+) and land it in a location that baits hitters into swings. But even if the pitch isn’t a whiff-getter, it can work with the rest of his arsenal to keep hitters from trying to sit on his fastball/sinker.
When Miller got lit up by Baltimore on May 17, he threw 40% four-seamers plus 22% sinkers with 20% splitters; he got just six whiffs on 86 pitches, four on the four-seamer and two on the slider. Against the Orioles on the Fourth of July, Miller went way more splitter-heavy, throwing 26 of them for weak-contact outs and using the curveball as a supporting player, getting a couple of flyball outs on the pitch but largely using it to set up the rest of his arsenal. With the addition of the knuckle curve, Miller was able to use seven different pitches against the Orioles, allowing him to keep his splitter percentage up but dial the fastballs down, an effective approach against fastball-hunting teams like Baltimore. As a bonus, he also got more called strikes and more whiffs—including three on the splitter, after getting none in his previous outing—using the more diverse pitch mix.
The danger with the knuckle curve is, because of the violent downward action, the pitch can easily get spiked and go wild, and Miller says he’s spiked a few as he’s been working to master the pitch. But the ever-confident Miller isn’t worried about that aspect, and his confidence extends to his batterymate. “Even if that happens, Cal can stop it,” he said. “As long as I don’t throw it over his head, he can stop it.”