Padres’ Mason Miller is making MLB run out of ways to describe his historic start

At this point, it is starting to feel like a job to come up with fresh ways to talk about Mason Miller without just repeating ourselves. Every outing looks the same in the best possible way. The Padres hand him the ball, hitters look overmatched, and by the end of the inning we are all sitting there wondering how anyone is supposed to function against this stuff. Through his first seven appearances, Miller has four saves, a 0.00 ERA, 19 strikeouts, one hit allowed, one walk, and a ridiculous 0.27 WHIP across 7 1/3 innings. 

It is genuinely historic. Miller pushed his scoreless streak to 28 2/3 innings on Friday, the longest active streak in baseball. AJ Cassavell also reported that 19 of the 24 hitters Miller had faced this season struck out, which works out to a 79.2 percent strikeout rate through his first seven appearances, the highest by any pitcher in that span to begin a season since at least 1900. 

Padres’ Mason Miller keeps rewriting history with every overpowering inning

The Padres aren’t getting empty style points with this one. This is directly changing games. Miller struck out the side on April 9 against Colorado. Then he came right back the next night, pitched for the third straight day, and struck out all three hitters he faced again before Gavin Sheets ended it with a walk-off homer. If San Diego gets to the ninth with a lead, the whole thing is completely unfair.

Miller’s slider has produced a 76.9 percent whiff rate this season, which is just disgusting behavior from a pitch that already has to play off triple-digit velocity. During this scoreless streak, opposing hitters had managed only five hits in 79 at-bats, all singles, and nearly sixty percent of the batters he faced during that stretch struck out.

Sarah Langs dropped another stat that makes this whole thing feel even more stupid in the best way. Mason Miller already has four appearances this season where he faced at least three hitters and struck out every single one of them. Nobody had done that through a team’s first 14 games since at least 1900. We are barely into April and this guy is already putting up the kind of numbers that usually show up when people start building award cases and falling down Baseball Reference rabbit holes.

That is why it feels impossible to stop talking about him. We’re not forcing Miller to be the hot topic. The topic keeps forcing itself into the conversation. Padres fans have seen great relievers before. Trevor Hoffman built a legend here. Kirby Yates had a monster year. Craig Kimbrel had swing-and-miss dominance. But what Miller is doing right now has its own flavor of absurdity, because it’s arriving all at once with elite velocity, absurd whiff rates, historic strikeout numbers, and a total lack of fear.