Behind gutsy effort from Bryce Miller, Mariners seize early control of ALCS
What a sentence, huh?
The Mariners weren’t going to play their way to a pennant by not doing the things they do best. Obviously, right?
Well, for one night at least, it seemed they might have to.
After emptying the clip to win one of the greatest games in franchise history and move to their first American League Championship Series in 24 years, it’d be Bryce Miller on three days rest up against a Blue Jays offense fresh off broadsiding the Yankees to the tune of 8.5 runs per game.
After the win, Dan Wilson said he was hoping to get four frames from his right-hander. He received six innings of one-run ball—and one hit after the first pitch.
As I mentioned in my own piece pregame, finished off hastily probably about as Miller was headed out to the bullpen at Rogers to discover an extra tick or three on the heater, I wrote the Mariners did “have the bats, after all”—because I thought they’d need them.
And they did, the game-swinging swat from Cal Raleigh and clutch knocks from Polo, but the story of the game was—as it’s been for this entire era—starting pitching.
Well, starting pitching and player development.
As mentioned in the caption on the photo above, that’s Bryce Miller pregame, probably before BP, sitting at the base of the outfield wall and preparing himself for the biggest outing of his career to date.
The media asked him about it postgame. Here’s Miller’s full answer:
“I’d never pitched here. I’ve been here a few times but never thrown. Going into it, I knew this was the biggest start of my career so far. I just wanted to get out there, mentally get in the zone, and visualize having success on the mound.
That’s something [Adam Bernero], our mental skills guy, walks us through—visualizing certain pitches with runners on, in the stretch, and seeing yourself from a third-person view having success. That way, when you’re in the moment, it feels like you’ve already been there.
I tried to do that and just settle down. There’s been a lot of excitement and nerves coming into today, especially coming off that long game in Seattle two nights ago.
So I just wanted to take a moment for myself.
Do you think he visualized facing George Springer for a third time as the potential final out of the fifth and getting him flailing at a slider off the plate away? And then coming back out for the sixth with Vladito looming?
Maybe he did. Probably not that exactly, though, since the whole point is an ethos that goes back to the first days of the Dipoto administration—staying in the moment and winning every pitch.
This is Andy McKay’s bread and butter. Winning mentals, winning pitches—going back to the first days of the first offseason.
If I’m in this spot against this guy, I throw this. And I follow the splitter, with its run in on the righties with the slider away. I can see myself doing it the whiff.
It’s drafting this kid, it’s developing and harnessing the stuff, it’s training him mentally for the big moments and trusting him to let it all rip when those moments do come.
It’s the stuff great organizations do.
The Mariners are not perfect. No organization is—and the M’s are further from it than at least a few teams.
But they didn’t get to where they are now by accident. And where they are is three wins from the pennant.
On to Game Two.
Go M’s.