ARLINGTON, Texas – Mason Miller and Garrett Crochet throw the baseball harder than almost anyone on the planet, play for two of the worst teams who compete at the game’s highest level and still are years away from determining their fate through free agency.
It is an odd and almost unprecedented place to be, a walking Statcast phenomenon and trade rumor all at once.
Yet when you play for the 37-61, Sacramento-to-Vegas-bound Oakland Athletics and average 100.9 mph on your fastball while converting 15 of 17 save chances, you’re going to draw significant interest – and Miller most certainly has.
And when your first full season as a starting pitcher results in a major league-leading 150 strikeouts before the All-Star break, like Crochet, the fact your Chicago White Sox are off to a historically bad 27-71 start means he can figuratively pack his bags for Midway.
Never mind that Miller entered this season with less than a year of service time and will have five full seasons before free agency. Or that Crochet faces an unknown second half of usage and innings limit questions, and the White Sox control his rights for two seasons beyond this one.
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They are that good, and their teams that bad, that their otherworldly talents might be best served to triage two organizations bleeding out at all levels.
This week, Miller and Crochet shared a locker room as first-time American League All-Stars who share a similar tool: Compartmentalization.
Best to tune out the uncertainty and know that, deep down, it’s good to be wanted. Even if it means a change of address.
‘It’s not something I necessarily expected, just with my age,’ says Crochet, a 25-year-old like Miller. ‘At the same time, it’s a testament to the season that I’m having. When you’re having a season like this, maybe the potential returns outweigh what you’re receiving right now.
‘I don’t know. I’m not the guy to make that call. But I think it’s a huge compliment that the value I provide to my team right now, someone else wants.’
Crochet’s season has surprised himself and the White Sox; he lobbied general manager Chris Getz to join the rotation after spending the 2020-21 seasons as a reliever before April 2022 Tommy John surgery shelved him until this year.
Going back to the bullpen was on the table. So too was a trip to the minor leagues, he acknowledged, to get his starter legs back underneath him.
But Crochet won the job and soon blew away hitters, leading the majors in strikeouts, strikeouts per nine innings (12.6) and the AL in fielding independent pitching. And his 20 starts are more than any major leaguer, a surprise given his return from Tommy John.
The White Sox are already putting him on a diet; he pitched just two innings in his last start, and his 107 1/3 innings pitched are nearly double his career high of 54 ⅓ in 2021.
‘Would it be skipping a start, or would it be shortening starts to stay on the five-day routine? I expressed my belief that the five-day routine would make more sense getting through the year on a normal starter schedule,’ says Crochet.
‘Every time I get an out at this point, it’s a new career high. I don’t really want to put a ceiling on it.’
That adds a certain element of buyer beware for potential trade partners, but Crochet’s dominance could be deployed in a number of manners for a contending team: Short, dominant bursts of two or three innings or sporadic conventional starts to keep him viable for the stretch drive.
Miller, strangely, is in a similar yet opposite boat. A starter when he debuted in 2023, Miller suffered an elbow scare that compelled the A’s to move him to the bullpen. The A’s acknowledge Miller may eventually have a future as a starter.
But for now, he is among the game’s greatest relievers – a far better asset for a contending team than one in limbo until at least 2028, when the A’s hope to open a stadium in Las Vegas.
Miller usually toils before crowds of less than 10,000 in Oakland. Tuesday night, a capacity crowd at Globe Life Field and an international television audience was treated to his record-setting heat.
He admits breaking Aroldis Chapman’s All-Star Game velocity record of 103.5 mph was “a loose goal,” and mission accomplished: Miller hit 103.6 on a fastball to Trea Turner in the fifth inning.
It was a tour de force: Miller struck out Shohei Ohtani on four pitches, two of them 100-plus fastballs looking and then getting a weak swing on his wipeout backfoot slider.
Miller was the winning pitcher in the AL’s 5-3 win, also punching out Turner in his clean fifth.
‘To do it on this stage, in front of this crowd, against these talented players, is something I’ll have forever,’ he said in the victorious AL clubhouse.
His season-long sample suggests unparalleled dominance, ranking in the 100th percentile in fastball velocity (100.1 mph), chase (38.1%), expected batting average (.128) and strikeout percentage (46.7%).
Those numbers play particularly well in October. For now, they are the shiny hood ornament on a broken-down organization playing its final season in Oakland’s Coliseum.
‘None of it is anything I can control. I try to stay away from it as much as I can,’ says Miller of trade rumors and conjecture. ‘But family and friends are like, this is what’s new. This is the news. The online stuff that really doesn’t hold much water.
‘At the end of the day I don’t have a say in it all. That portion of it’s easy for me to dissociate with and say, I don’t have a dog in that fight and whatever will be, will be. I’m happy being with the guys I’m with and honored to be here representing them and excited to work with them in the second half.’
The A’s have carefully monitored his usage, not pitching him in back-to-back games until his ninth appearance and just three times overall. He’s come out of it wonderfully, his 33 appearances putting him on a similar pace as late-inning peers and his 70 strikeouts in 39 ⅔ innings worth salivating over.
‘The training wheels are off. He can go back-to-back. We’ve used him aggressively the past couple weeks. He’s being used as normal now,’ says A’s manager Mark Kotsay, a member of the the AL All-Star staff. ‘We’re just trying to get him to the finish line completely healthy and 60-plus appearances would be amazing.’
Preferably, from Kotsay’s perspective, on behalf of Oakland’s Athletics.
‘From Mason’s standpoint,’ he says, ‘the success he’s had in the role, the measurables and the data align with the desire that teams in need of a pitcher on the back end would absolutely pursue him.
‘But at the same point, we also know the value of having him. It provides for our club the stability on the back end. It comes with a high probability of winning baseball games and that’s important to us as well.’
Miller’s organization can’t help but look at the big picture. Their Las Vegas move, commissioner Rob Manfred says Wednesday, remains on track even as owner John Fisher continues lining up financing to pay for their new stadium.
From 2025-28, a minor-league park in Sacramento will be home, despite the scorching summer temperatures and artificial turf designed to accommodate two home teams and constant use.
For Miller, the daily rigmarole will be welcomed. Perhaps the A’s can say where they’ll be in a year, less so their uniformed personnel.
For now, it’s back to the Coliseum, Friday against the Angels, a second half unfolding, a new destination only in the abstract, but perhaps growing closer in reality.
‘Baseball players are lucky that we get to just care about the next day, the next week, this season,’ says Miller. ‘We have that to focus on. When we get to next year, we’ll see where it’s at and what we’re looking at.
‘I got loyalty to the guys I’m with and the work we’re doing over there. Until that day comes, that’s where my loyalty is.’