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Mason Miller is probably the best thrower-of-the-baseball we currently have here on planet Earth. The San Diego Padres traded a top-three prospect in baseball, Leo De Vries, for him less than a year ago. Yet he’s apparently on the trade block again, or at the very least the Padres have launched an exploratory committee about putting him on it. How is any of that possible?
Mason Miller is an elite trade candidate, but why is he available?
There are two very simple reasons why: first, it is not looking good for the Padres, who have a losing record in a division and league that does not tolerate losers. Second, he’s a closer, and closers are not the most valuable thing to teams with a losing record. Are the Padres really just cutting their losses after trading such an elite shortstop prospect for Miller?
I don’t think they are; rather, I think this is the time to trade Miller, who may have just stumbled his way into becoming one of the most valuable players at the deadline despite him being a closer. With Aroldis Chapman likely off the board because of the Boston Red Sox’s absurd turnaround, Miller could really corner the market.
Here’s the deal with Miller in one analogy: if you had one at-bat for the fate of the universe, the aliens with the death laser pointed at earth brought up their leadoff hitter with two outs in the bottom of the ninth, and you needed to sit this man down, who are you handing the ball to? Provided this intergalactic save opportunity occurred in 2026, the answer is Mason Miller. The flamethrowing, imagination-capturing closer colossus of San Diego has simply been too good, too dominant to think that anyone else has a better chance of getting one out. Because nobody else can do this:
“104 on the outside corner” is a figure of speech I use with my friends when we feel like a supporting actor in a new movie absolutely cooked in their one scene or when I’m at a restaurant and I get served the greatest Thai crab red chili dish ever. It’s not supposed to be an actual pitch you could uncork to freeze a guy with two strikes in the playoffs.
Miller’s Statcast profile is obviously absurd, but it’s probably not quite as crazy as one would suggest given his actual performance so far this year: he has a .86 ERA (aka four total earned runs) in 41.2 IP; he has given up zero home runs while striking out over 16 batters per nine innings, one of the best marks ever. Miller is such an overpowering pitcher that teams just cannot create any damaging contact. When you have 104 mph gas with a murderous slider, hitters are just guessing. Guessing, shockingly, does not equal quality at-bats.
Miller is a statistically dominant pitcher in the perfect market
But Miller’s value goes well beyond the data, as the aforementioned lack of truly elite relief pitching at the deadline could net San Diego a fairly absurd haul for a player they traded a fairly absurd haul for just last year. I think it would be the right choice given he’s having one of the best reliever seasons of all time when a huge number of teams can talk themselves into contending. Miller improves so many teams’ chances.
We will conclude with two philosophical questions: first, should San Diego be reprimanded for cutting bait on a player they invested so much in so soon? It certainly looks like short-sighted, impulsive decision-making if the team was not ready to commit to Miller long-term, but San Diego was in win-now mode (they still are … it’s just not going great) and De Vries is 19 years old. You have to make decisions based on what makes sense for your franchise, and that probably did at the time. Now, offloading Miller for another haul of assets makes sense. It’s a cruel world.
How valuable are closers really, though?
Second: we need a unified theory of closers and their trade value, because teams drive themselves crazy for relievers at the deadline despite the fact that the best relievers only pitch one inning when their team is already winning. That doesn’t really pass the data test or the smell test, and some Sabermetrics enjoyers have been saying for decades that it’s probably better to use a closer when the game is tied. 72 percent of MLB half-innings are scoreless anyhow; do we really want our best guy out there preventing a run when we’re already winning?
Some food for thought. In any case, I wouldn’t fault the Padres for trading Miller nor would I make fun of them for re-dealing him a year later. I hope everyone lands on their feet!
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This article was originally published on fansided.com as What the data says about Mason Miller trade rumors and the Padres deadline approach.
