推 jameshu0910:對他沒啥印象@@ 01/29 21:56
推 mlb:可以持續觀察他今年Portland開季的表現,這樣看農場才有意思 01/30 11:36
推 jameshu0910:我會特別注意他的,去年那幾位OVER SLOT也值得注意XD 02/01 19:27
※ 編輯: mohicans 來自: 114.24.2.159 (03/03 10:18)
Glimpse of the Future: The unlikely path of Ryne Miller
Fri, 01/29/2010 - 2:03am
By Alex Speier
There were few surprises among the list of participants in the Red Sox’
Rookie Development Program.
There was Casey Kelly, the first-rounder who is considered the top pitching
prospect in the system. Jose Iglesias, the former member of the Cuban junior
national team who signed with the Sox for $8.25 million contract, shared
center stage.
Junichi Tazawa and Che-Hsuan Lin, among the most prominent amateurs to come
out of Japan and Taiwan, also participated. So, too, did Ryan Kalish and Josh
Reddick, the outfielders who have been considered among the top prospects in
the system for the past few years.
The group was comprised primarily of the highest profile players in the Sox’
minor-league system. For most of the 12 participants, the notion that a
big-league feature lies just a season or two away came as anything but
unexpected.
Yet for at least one program participant, inclusion in such a category seemed
almost unfathomable. After all, just four years ago, it would have been
impossible to imagine Ryne Miller in professional baseball, let alone with a
vision of a major-league pitching future. Even Miller found it difficult to
believe that he was in Boston as a prelude to a possible big-league future.
“I don’t think highly of myself. I feel like I’m the low guy on the totem
pole,” said Miller. “There are a lot of good players in this organization.”
Yet Miller, improbably, has quietly made a case that he is one of them.
FROM TWO-SPORT ATHLETE TO NO-SPORT ATHLETE
Miller had quit baseball in 2003, after his junior year of high school, to
focus on a football career. It would be hard to consider the choice shocking.
Miller, after all, had grown up in Odessa, Texas, and started his prep career
(before his family moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area during his junior
year) at Permian High School. He was very much a part of the culture of the
city and school that offered the subject of Buzz Bissinger’s Friday Night
Lights.
The lure of football seemed all but irresistible. And so, after receiving a
scholarship offer to play quarterback at University of Louisiana at Monroe,
Miller walked away from the diamond.
But college football didn’t go exactly as planned. Miller enrolled at
Louisiana-Monroe, but the team wanted to move him from quarterback to tight
end during spring practices of his freshman year.
Miller ended up leaving school and going home. What awaited him was
uninspiring.
“I spent a year out of school, didn’t do anything. I just worked,” said
Miller. “I was a porter in an apartment complex, cleaning the grounds,
cleaning the pool. In July in Texas, it’s about 100 degrees. I looked up at
the sun and said, ‘I don’t want to be doing this for the rest of my life.’
”
Miller told his father that he wanted to go back to school, and his dad
agreed to bankroll the decision. He enrolled at Weatherford College in 2006.
Roughly three years after he’d last played baseball, he walked onto the
baseball team before earning a scholarship for the spring semester. The team
asked him to throw sidearm, and he ended up working as Weatherford’s closer.
GETTING DISCOVERED
In the summer of 2007, he pitched in the Texas Collegiate League. There, he
returned to pitching over the top in an effort to generate more velocity.
“We had a kid who was throwing 96, 97. The scouts would always come and
watch him. I’d come in after him, and they’d pack up their stuff and leave.
So I’m like, ‘Well, nobody knows who I am,’” said Miller. “I went back
over the top, and I don’t know how it happened, but it just came easy.”
The right-hander pitched well, earning a spot on the TCL All-Star team, a
contest attended by scouts from virtually every major-league team. In that
game, Miller opened eyes. He had never exceeded 91 mph, but that day, he
touched 96 mph while striking out both of the batters he faced.
Evaluators noticed, including Red Sox area scout Jim Robinson. He called the Sox front office and said that there was a big right-hander with
good stuff who had gone undrafted but was eligible to sign. Other Red Sox
evaluators were able to catch Miller’s performance on video. The next day,
the team signed the undrafted free agent to a $47,500 bonus.
Miller had a respectable debut, logging a 2.08 ERA as a 21-year-old in the
Rookie Level GCL and for the Lowell Spinners. He flashed a solid fastball and
a good feel for his curveball.
In 2008, however, he performed poorly in his first full professional season.
He encountered early-season arm injuries, and when he returned, he had a 5.68
ERA in 29 games while walking 23 batters in 50.2 innings.
He struggled to repeat his delivery and command the strike zone, largely
because he had ballooned to the point where he looked like a tight end.
“We liked the arm,” noted Sox farm director Mike Hazen. “With the physical
setbacks initially, it was kind of hard to see it.”
The 6-foot-4 Miller acknowledges that he had increased to 260 pounds, and it
wasn’t good weight. That offseason, Miller decided that he needed to commit
to his craft.
“I just concentrated everything on baseball,” said Miller. “I wasn’t
serious about baseball at all. I said, ‘If you want to make this your
career, you’ve got to dedicate.’”
BECOMING A PITCHER, AND A PROSPECT
Miller hired a personal trainer, and by spring training in 2009, he was down
to 215 pounds. When he showed up in spring training a year ago, the Sox were
floored. Miller looked the part of a pitcher, and he felt like a pitcher.
His stuff was instantly better. Rather than being a grunt-and-groan pitcher
who had to labor to generate velocity and thus lost the strike zone, Miller
became a more natural pitcher.
“You feel more comfortable with yourself. You don’t feel a big belly around
you,” he said. “It’s easier for your mechanics. A fluid motion is much
easier.”
The decrease in weight, many observed, was directly related to an increased
ability to repeat his delivery. Improved command and overall performance on
the mound followed.
“Last year at this time, he was just another guy going to camp,” said
roving pitching coordinator Ralph Treuel. “He came out of nowhere because of
his body. The way he took to the conditioning, the throwing program – he
just became dedicated.
“He really caught my eye when he walked into spring training last year in
just phenomenal shape. I said, ‘This guy has taken ownership of his career
and wants to become a major-league pitcher.’”
With his performance, Miller moved towards that goal. He started 2009 in High
A Salem, going 8-2 with a 2.77 ERA, striking out 59 and walking 18 in 55.1
innings. He was named MVP of the Carolina-California League All-Star game
when he punched out five of the six batters he faced.
Then, he was promoted to Portland, where Miller had a 2.28 ERA in 11 relief
appearances. Based on his effectiveness and his three-pitch arsenal (low-90s
fastball, potentially plus curveball that he commands well, work-in-progress
changeup), Treuel recommended that the Sox give him a season-ending trial in
the rotation.
“At 250 [pounds], he’s not a starter. At 225, we feel like he’ll be more
durable and healthy. … Ralph wanted to start him. We’d seen what he’d done
as a bullpen guy. He’d had success in multiple innings. We also think this
guy has three pitches,” said Hazen. “We’ve always started all of our best
arms. [Treuel] said, ‘I think this guy can start.’ And he did.”
In his first two outings for Portland, Miller struck out 15 in 10.2 innings,
allowed just four hits and didn’t allow a single earned run. Despite a rough
line in his third start, the Sox saw enough to convince them to invite the
24-year-old to their Rookie Development Program.
Miller himself took well to the conversion. For that, he suggested that Mike
Cather, his pitching coach last year in Portland, offered a piece of crucial
advice.
“At first, I just paced myself. But Mike Cather told me to go out there just
like I was relieving: close out every inning. That’s what I did,” said
Miller. “I treated every inning like it was my last. Close it out, close it
out. Before you know it, I’m in the fifth inning.”
The Sox will continue to develop Miller as a starter in Double A to open
2010. In that capacity, he will have a greater opportunity to get a better
feel for his changeup and to learn to control the running game.
Longer term, he may well end up back in the bullpen. But the fact that there
might be an avenue for him to reach the majors, whether as a starter or
reliever, has gone from improbable to realistic in the course of a few years.
The fact that the Sox had him in Boston for the Rookie Development Program
served as a reminder of that notion. Miller has developed into a fringe
prospect for the Sox, with a decent shot at a big-league future.
For Miller, the unlikely development – just a few years removed from a time
when he was cleaning the grounds of an apartment complex – remained hard to
fathom.
“This is what every kid, when they’re young, they dream about,” said
Miller. “I dreamed about it when I was young, and I’m living my dream.”
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