St. Louis Cardinals: Andrew Miller is dealing with some injury uncertainty

The St. Louis Cardinals were let down by Andrew Miller last year in his first year with the club. Now in spring, Miller may be dealing with an injury.

Think back to about this time last year. The St. Louis Cardinals were coming into the season after acquiring the best bat and reliever on the market over the winter and fan morale was high. Of course, the two players I’m referring to were Paul Goldschmidt and Andrew Miller.

Unfortunately, neither player had the season they wanted to have in 2019. We all know about how Goldschmidt did, but for Miller, his struggles were much more in the shadows.

Miller may not have been coming off of the best 2018 season when the Cardinals signed him to a two-year, $25M deal, but Miller certainly was an elite reliever earlier in his career. In his career, Miller had been 200% better than average twice and at least 98% better than average four times.

It’s a bold bet to ask a 34-year-old with a lot of innings to get back to anywhere near that level and 2019 showed it may be difficult to get anywhere close. Miller was 3% below average as a whole but had a 5.19 FIP in a team-leading 73 appearances.

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His strikeouts were actually better than his career rates (but not near his elite levels) but the biggest change was that Miller stopped limiting homers. Miller’s 1.8 HR/9 was the highest of his career and can be marked as a key reason why he had such a high FIP.

2020 is a clean slate for Miller though and the now-35-year-old had appeared in one spring training game before he began warming up on Monday. After warming, Miller was shut down for the day. For a guy like Miller who has so many innings on his arm, this is never a good sign.

As was reported, Mike Shildt said that Miller, “couldn’t get a feel for the baseball” which isn’t a good sign. I say uncertainty because Miller isn’t hurt, “It’s frustrating, but I feel — physically nothing hurts.” Miller said on Monday.

He may not feel like anything is hurt, but anytime a pitcher can’t feel the baseball, something is wrong.

The Cardinals saw something at least similar in Dominic Leone with his two years with the club. Leone had diagnosed nerve issues where he couldn’t feel the ball because his hand was numb when he threw it. That first led to a complete drop off in performance (not at all surprising as a pitcher’s entire career bases off his ability to feel the ball), and then led to him spending a lot of time on the IL.

The scary thing right now is that neither the Cardinals nor Miller knows what exactly is wrong. It could be like Cecil’s injury, it could be something else completely. Miller is just 37 appearances away from triggering a third-year vesting option on his contract that the Cardinals may regret giving him.

If this issue is on the worse end of what it could be, Miller probably won’t hit 37 appearances.

Back to the immediate situation, the Cardinals were likely going to give Miller (the most experienced reliever the team has) a shot at the closer spot off the bat, but that may not happen. As I detailed in this article, the Cardinals have a lot of young relievers who are throwing very well this spring.

We will look at exactly who fits in Miller’s spot best when we have more news on exactly what is going to happen with the situation.

For now, the Cardinals will continue camp as they were, taking the punches as they come. I loved the Miller signing when it happened and sort of decided to not look at Miller’s statistics last year because I wanted him to be the weapon that led the Indians to the World Series. Sadly though, it seems that the best days for Miller are likely behind him. Let this at least be another cautionary tale on signing relievers entering their mid-30s. Hopefully we get good news soon.