Broken pinkie for the All-Star closer
Oakland is reportedly set to lose its All-Star closer to the IL as the team announced that Mason Miller has a broken pinkie and will head to the shelf:
We have made the following roster moves. pic.twitter.com/mRaSBJUrhB
— Oakland A's (@Athletics) July 25, 2024
Wow. What a frustrating turn of events. Miller has been nearly unhittable all season in his first action as a full-time reliever. On the year he’s sporting a pristine 2.21 ERA in 34 appearances. He’s 15-for-17 in save opportunities and has struck out an insane 70 batters in 40 2⁄3 innings pitched. This will definitely hurt the bullpen while he’s out, but it seems like it could be a short-term injury. He’s arguably been the most electric closer in baseball with his triple-digit fastball striking fear into hitters.
That’s why teams have been calling the A’s about his availability. To this point the club has repeatedly stated publicly that they’re not interested in dealing him. There have been other reports and rumors that the club is at least listening and even setting a price, a high price, on their prized reliever. Understandably so, as Miller still has five more years of team control after this season and has the added upside of possibly moving to a starting role again.
This injury probably makes a trade even less likely that it already was. While this particular injury isn’t a serious one, it was just last season that Miller had a scare with his elbow. Thankfully it was a best-case scenario and he seems to have fully recovered from it but it also gave teams pause when considering whether to offer up the massive package it would take to acquire him. Never say never but it seems that Miller is here to stay, at least for now.
Taking his place on the active roster is veteran right-hander Ross Stripling. The 34-year old has missed the past two months after battling elbow problems but now returns to make tonight’s start to kick off the Angels series. It’s been a tough go of it for Stripling this year as he had an unsightly 5.82 ERA before going down with injury. Hopefully the time off allowed him to figure out what was going wrong, and he’ll return to the team looking more like the Stripling from the past. One can only hope.
