As Wade Miley Falls into the Abyss, Should O's Should Let Him Go?

At the halfway point, the Orioles were in a fix for starting pitching.  Feel free to copy that onto your clipboard for any retrospective application to the Duquette dynasty, a bit before, and likely into the perceptible future.  The Orioles always have seemed to be in a bit of a quandary when it comes to the rotation.  Even in 2014, the first half's rotation was a bit squirrelly with collective memory bronzing the dominant second half collective sub-2.50 performance delivered by Chris Tillman, Miguel Gonzalez, and Wei-Yin Chen.  Gausman and Norris back filled sun-4.00 ERAs as well.  Those indeed were the salad days.

Last year was not that.  Last year saw some struggle.  Of course, those struggles look pretty cheerful now with a rotation that is currently the worst in franchise history.  Anyway, the club spent all of July looking for another starting pitcher and wound up looking at Wade Miley.  It would be the second "proven veteran" for "journeyman minor leaguer" the Orioles and Mariners arranged for the 2016 season.  The first one sent Twitter aficionado and Arrieta trade return Steve Clevenger for 1B/DH/?RF? Mark Trumbo.  That one worked out pretty well for the Orioles.  This second one with aged Cuban prospect Ariel Miranda for better-on-paper Wade Miley has been much more uneven.

Better-on-paper is a good way to describe Wade Miley.  He gets ground balls, he strikes out batters, and allows few walks.  However, what the Red Sox and Mariners found out was that he also tends to have problems elevating his pitches.  It could make him homer prone at times.  Also, the recent trend to try to uppercut pitches is not as well spread a thing as the media would have you believe, but it is enough of a trend to drastically impact pitchers who heavily really on sinking action.  A pitcher like Wade Miley, who employs heavily a good but not great sinker, is often presenting a pitch on the same plane as a batter who is trying to uppercut the ball.  His career home runs per fly ball norm of around 10% jump to 16% last year and now sits at 20% this year.  League norm is around 10%.  This has been somewhat devastating to Miley.

In turn, it has made Miley more skittish around the plate.  Longer innings and longer fly balls have turned into a sky rocketing walk rate.  In part, this walk rate has been negatively impacted by Welington Castillo's pitch framing butchery, but that does not seem to explain all of it.  Regardless, the home run rate and walk rate have sputtered a solid, if unspectacular, four slot pitcher into a fringey more back end arm.

This October, the Orioles will be staring at a choice.  Should they pick up Miley's option for a final year at 12 MM or should they pay him 500k to depart.  Miley appears to be a degrading commodity.  Two heavy analytical groups (Boston and Seattle) quickly gave up on an arm typically appreciated by more analytical types.  I wondered what exactly would my BORAS model think of Miley now.  Last year, the BORAS model once again nailed pitching contracts (though, admittedly it was terrible at position players unlike previous seasons where the model did well for both).  Last year, the model saw Miley as a 3/36 player if he was on the free agent pile last year.  Now? It pegs him as a 2/16 player.

What I want to use BORAS for though is to compare what pitchers are similar to the 11.5 MM cost of Miley and also who does BORAS consider similar to Miley's 8 MM projection.  First, BORAS thought no one would see a one year contract above 7.1 MM (Francisco Liriano).  To expand that to two years just to have some names to throw around: CC Sabathia (11.1 MM), Scott Feldman (10.7 MM), and Clayton Richard (10 MM).  Those three are older pitchers, who have performed about average recently.  Does it make sense to lock in a second year for one of those pitchers at the same cost?  I would argue no.  I think Miley is just as likely to put up a 2 WAR season as any of those guys, especially Feldman or Richard.

So what level of performance does BORAS think Miley is at?  Similar pitchers would be Yovani Gallardo (2/14), Tyson Ross (2/13), Liriano (7.1), and Hector Santiago (2/11).  All of these pitchers fit the same mold, two years ago they were pretty decent.  They are the inverse of Feldman and Richard.  And this is where the conversation gets interesting.  Is Miley worth a 3 MM premium on his services or do you role the dice on two lesser projected arm like Brett Anderson (1/6), Derek Holland (1/5), Miguel Gonzalez (1/6) or Chris Tillman (1/5.5).

In the end, my considerations are this: Miley is a one year contract for a player who is healthy, has shown an uncharacteristic walk rate, and whose alternatives are not clear improvements or represent big savings.  Two rough seasons in a row is not a good look.  It is concerning.  However, this club has few options in the starting rotation.  Sinking in similar money for a long contract FA option like Marco Estrada (3/34) or Andrew Cashner (3/38) seems to be poorer options.  Going with Mike Wright or Tyler Wilson also seems to be inadvisable.

So, picking up Wade Miley's option looks like the best of poor options.  He is young.  He has pitched well before.  It is only a one year endeavor at this point and looks similar to the 1/10.5 contract the Rangers inked Cashner to before this season.  Those attributes might push Miley up to a similar deal given how thin starting pitching options are almost every year.


Below are the current BORAS contract projections (7/18):

	Age	Yr	Total
Yu Darvish	31	6	118
Jason Vargas	35	4	80
Jake Arrieta	32	3	45
Alex Cobb	30	4	53
Lance Lynn	31	3	42
Jaime Garcia	31	3	42
Trevor Cahill	30	3	47
Tyler Chatwood	28	4	57
Andrew Cashner	31	3	38
Marco Estrada	34	3	35
CC Sabathia	37	2	25
Scott Feldman	35	2	22
Clayton Richard	34	2	22
Jhoulys Chacin	30	3	28
Jeremy Hellickson	31	3	31
Yovani Gallardo	32	2	14
Wade Miley	31	2	16
Tyson Ross	31	2	13
Francisco Liriano	34	1	7
Hector Santiago	30	2	11
Miguel Gonzalez	34	1	6
Brett Anderson	30	1	6
Derek Holland	31	1	5
Chris Tillman	30	1	6