Houston Astros have no choice but to roll with Wade Miley in postseason
The Houston Astros have voiced legitimate concerns about Wade Miley readiness. Here’s why they have no choice but to roll with him. Let’s look into it more.
The Houston Astros are about to close the season out with one more week of action to go before the playoffs start. The team is looking to get not only a win to clinch the series against the Los Angeles Angels but to also have the rights to brag about winning the AL West, something that is still in play until they win another game.
The team couldn’t overcome the amount runs given up early by Wade Miley — he had a total of four to his credit — and there was no record-setting comeback in them as they did against the Seattle Mariners a few weeks back.
Needless to say, he was pulled after just 1.0 inning of work by AJ Hinch to try to see if he could stop the bleeding. But no, it continued with Jose Urquidy, Bryan Abreu giving up a run each. Hector Rondon gave up two later in the game.
It’s cool, you can’t win them all, it was clear the Houston Astros just didn’t have enough that game to get over the hump.
But speaking of Miley, the team has expressed legitimate concerns about his readiness for the postseason moving forward. This is his third straight start where he got the short hook by Hinch because he had done so much damage on the number of runs he had given up early.
Miley has said he’s been looking at the tape, determining if he’s tipping his pitches among other things but what he’s doing is still not working.
His go-to pitches, his fastball that gets up in the 90s and his high 80s cutter is what the Angels were grabbing a hold of. He was having a lot more of success with his change-up, but unfortunately, you can’t throw that out every pitch.
In fact, it was his cutter that hit Michael Hermosillo by his pitch early at the top of the 2nd inning. It just wasn’t getting better for Miley and pulling him from the game was the best thing for him at this point.
Just to illustrate how bad he’s been this month in his last four stats, Miley has a 22.09 ERA and
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has allowed 18 runs on 23 hits through 7.1 innings pitched.
But for all intent and purposes, they’re stuck with Miley and have no choice but to roll with him going into the postseason as a 4th starter in the rotation.
If he still doesn’t have it together when it’s his turn, hopefully, it doesn’t get to that point, Hinch just needs to give him a short hook and have our bullpen go long for that game.
But you know what? I’m not thinking about that because I think Miley can turn this around and in short-order.
For a guy that wants to maximize his free agency earnings come this Winter, he’s got to turn in great performances in order for him keep raking in the millions. By the way, he’s on a one-year, $4.5 million deal with the Houston Astros to which what seemed like a tremendous bargain before September rolled around.
We’ll have to see but I’m rooting for Miley to get it right once again — go Houston Astros!
Miley has posted a 14-6 record, a 3.91 ERA while tossing 138 strikeouts to 71 earned runs this season with a 1.34 WHIP through163.1 innings pitched in 32 starts in 2019.