ANAHEIM, Calif. — Their seasons are linked, and their time is running short. The Los Angeles Dodgers have few answers to their postseason rotation, and two of their biggest question marks shared a Triple-A rotation this time last month.
No one around the Dodgers expected Walker Buehler’s and Bobby Miller’s season to go like this. And yet, given the multitude of unknowns surrounding their rotation, an opportunity has emerged. Tyler Glasnow won’t throw off a mound until this weekend as he works his way back from elbow tendonitis. Clayton Kershaw’s timeline is uncertain. Yoshinobu Yamamoto returns Sept. 10 but isn’t fully built up yet. It’s hardly an ideal position.
Buehler or Miller could wind up pitching for the Dodgers in October, for better or worse.
“They both have an opportunity to salvage this season,” manager Dave Roberts said this week.
Which makes each start carry more weight. Two nights in Anaheim have left arrows pointing in different directions. Buehler’s is up, allowing two runs over five innings Tuesday while finding equilibrium with how he used his fastball and off-speed offerings.
Miller’s is trending down, the victim of some of the same woes with command, velocity and sequencing that have plagued his season. Each of the first five Los Angeles Angels hitters he faced Wednesday reached safely and scored before he could even record an out. He allowed seven runs, including homers to Mickey Moniak, Niko Kavadas and Taylor Ward, in five innings in a 10-1 loss.
“It’s kind of hard to put into words,” Miller said.
It inflated Miller’s ERA to 7.79 through 11 starts, a step back after perceived strides in each of his last two outings.
Bobby Miller reacts after giving up a three-run homer on Aug. 29 against the Orioles. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
The woes were familiar.
“I think it’s really just a pitch selection thing on my part, not executing,” Miller said.
His changeup got swings-and-misses when competitive, but it came too late after the Angels pounded his early fastballs. He found success when he could land his curveball for strikes and got hit when he didn’t. He allowed three homers on fastballs, none all that poorly located but with slightly less velocity than a year ago. It allowed Moniak, Kavadas and Ward to turn on them and zero in, often in optimal counts.
The game plan was simple and obvious given Miller’s struggles this season.
“Definitely hurt the heater,” Ward said. Miller awarded the Angels plenty of opportunities to do so early. More than half the pitches those first five hitters saw in the first inning were fastballs. The off-speed pitches he did throw were largely out of the zone.
And “when he did make a mistake in the zone,” Angels manager Ron Washington said, “we didn’t miss it.”
Miller’s velocity, at its peak, hits triple digits. But it remains hittable in the zone. Especially in fastball counts.
“It’s a fastball that hitters see,” Roberts said, alluding to the characteristics that have always made Miller’s triple-digit velocity hittable. “It either has to be commanded really well and moved to different locations or you have to be able to get ahead with different breaking balls. That’s just the way it goes. And if you can’t do that, then the catcher is in a tough spot. We have to get better.”
Given how his season started, with six scoreless innings against the St. Louis Cardinals and looking “the best I’d ever seen him,” according to assistant pitching coach Connor McGuiness, the difference is stark. This time last year, Miller was making his case for a Game 1 start. He appeared primed for a resplendent second season in the bigs. Then his shoulder started to bark. He picked up bad habits, McGuiness said, unable to queue things up properly in his delivery and bringing his arm slot to a different position. A balky left knee that has bothered him hasn’t helped. A respite in the minors has done little to quell the inconsistencies, even if the talent in his right arm remains tantalizing.
It just hasn’t happened yet with Miller, who will get another start.
“Performance matters,” Roberts said. “It’s got to be better. And (Bobby) knows that. You just can’t go out there and give up five runs and put us behind the 8-ball. It’s not about the stuff because, as we’ve seen, the stuff is there. I say it time and time again: It’s about performance. You’ve got to perform and give us a chance.”
The stakes are a little more pressing for Buehler, who appears to be making a turn in his return from a second Tommy John surgery with less than a month to go in the Dodgers’ season — and until his free agency. Buehler completed five innings Tuesday and felt more like himself in mowing down the Angels’ lineup. He consistently got ahead and found ways to put away opposing hitters. His curveball once again looks like an effective weapon, and he has learned how to sequence it properly with his arsenal in its current form.
“I just think that the game tells you what adjustments you need or don’t need to make,” Roberts said. That includes using the breaking ball in different counts, not relying on a fastball or cutter that hasn’t generated the same results it once did.
More than anything, Buehler said, his delivery has clicked back into something repeatable — something he’s sought for months, even venturing to Cressey Sports Performance in Florida and then back to the minors on a rehab assignment to find it.
“The pitching coaches here got me in my delivery, and now everything feels familiar as opposed to feeling really foreign, as it did for a while,” Buehler said.
The delivery being in the right spot has opened Buehler’s arsenal, McGuiness said. It corrected the shape of Buehler’s curveball from being more “sweeper-y” to something more horizontal that he can land consistently for strikes and use for swing-and-miss when necessary.
The command has returned along with it. “Building blocks,” as Buehler put it, but positive signs nonetheless. Buehler said after his previous start he feels like the 2021 version of himself again, a version that wound up fourth in the NL Cy Young voting. McGuiness didn’t disagree, save for adding that rediscovering his changeup remains another critical step.
The clock is ticking on both.
“I would’ve loved to have felt like this in April, you know what I mean?” Buehler said. “But at the end of the day, I have a month to kind of more so put the finishing touches on how I feel as a major-league starter and how I can help us win in the playoffs.”
Buehler pitched his case. Miller’s still trying to make his.
(Top photo of Walker Buehler: Jayne Kamin-Oncea / USA Today)
