Their early season struggles were similar. Their long-term objective is the same.
But, in a bid to save their seasons and vie for a place in the Dodgers’ pitching plans for a potential postseason run, Bobby Miller and Walker Buehler traveled divergent paths to improvement while attempting to reset their game over the last month.
Miller, the second-year starter battling the ill effects of a shoulder injury from earlier this season, hunkered down with Dodgers coaches after being optioned to the minor leagues before the All-Star break.
The veteran Buehler went outside the organization amid a frustrating return from Tommy John surgery, spending time at a private training facility in Florida while out because of a hip injury before rejoining the team this week ahead of a minor-league rehab assignment.
“Obviously, there was a little bit of a different approach,” pitching coach Mark Prior said. “They’re not apples-to-apples scenarios.”
Why have the Dodgers been hit so repeatedly hard by the pitching injury bug? And when — and at what cost — is the right time to pursue potentially pricey reinforcements?
Both pitchers are among the Dodgers’ more talented arms, Miller with his heavy fastball and Buehler with his deep arsenal of breaking stuff. Both are potential X factors for the Dodgers’ banged-up pitching staff, which is eager to get them back in top form.
However, the plans Miller and Buehler have followed the last month reflect the different challenges facing each pitcher.
For Miller, it was about working with the coaching staff to get “back to his normal throw he had last year,” Prior said, before the flame-throwing right-hander developed bad delivery habits from his shoulder injury and posted an 8.07 earned-run average in seven starts.
“It was a combination of an injury and a little bit of like that sophomore [slump], where you’re on the map, people know you, have a better idea [of how to attack you],” Prior said. “Our confidence is when Bobby’s right, we know he has a five-pitch mix that really plays.”
With Buehler, the process has been more of a search, sending the two-time All-Star and former Cy Young candidate seeking different voices after putting up a 5.84 ERA in eight starts. He’s also been dealing with a lingering hip issue that landed him on the injured list last month.
“I kind of know what I want to be,” Buehler said last week. “I’m just struggling to find the first domino getting there.”
Indeed, when Buehler returned to the rotation — almost two years after his second Tommy John procedure — the right-hander didn’t look far from his old self.
His fastball sat around 95 mph, only a slight drop from his peak years of 2019 to 2021. While his spin rates had fallen since then too, he and Dodgers coaches still were encouraged by the “characteristics” of his pitches, confident his mix of cutters, sinkers, curveballs and sliders would give him enough options.
The problem was, for a pitcher who used to challenge, if not bully opponents with his four-seam fastball, Buehler no longer could attack with such in-the-zone aggression. He would fall behind early in counts, struggle to put hitters away with two strikes, and watch as once-untouchable heaters were instead turned around for a parade of hits and long home runs.
“It’s always been part of my game,” Buehler said, “the ability to turn it on when I wanted to.”
This year, however, “I just didn’t really have that gear,” he acknowledged. “When the delivery is not in the spot it’s been your whole career, you don’t have the feel to kind of go [like that].”
That’s why when Buehler landed on the injured list, the front office granted his request to train at Cressey Sports Performance near Palm Beach, Fla. — a well-known training lab frequented by other stars.
The Dodgers need Tyler Glasnow to deliver more outings like his performance Wednesday during a home loss to the San Francisco Giants.
“I wanted to go and see some different verbiage, different thoughts, different movement patterns, etc., to try to get those feels back,” Buehler said.
“We just had a lot of conversation about, ‘OK, let’s talk about what’s going to put you in the best position for you coming back to help us win a World Series,’” general manager Brandon Gomes added. “And he was confident that’s what was best for him.”
It wasn’t Buehler’s first foray into private instruction. The seven-year veteran previously worked at training centers like Driveline and Push Performance. He’s long been known for his curious baseball mind, closely following the cutting edge of modern pitching development.
“He felt like he needed a different voice,” Prior said. “And that’s fine. We’ve always been open to that, whether it’s during the season or during the offseason.”
This time, though, his nearly monthlong absence created some unknowns.
Dodgers pitching coaches saw only limited video of Buehler’s progress in Florida. And when he returned this week, Prior said the club would have to “wait and see” exactly how much Buehler has rectified.
“We all trust that if things are physically right and he’s executing pitches, that we feel pretty good about what he can do in a playoff game,” Prior said. “But I think, as we’ve seen, it hasn’t played out the way we all hoped and wanted it to. So we’ll have to go step by step and see where we’re at.”
On the other end of the spectrum, the Dodgers took a very hands-on approach with Miller, demoting him to triple A to work with director of pitching Rob Hill and others in the player development department.
Last year Miller emerged as a rookie star, going 11-4 with a 3.76 ERA to earn a place in the postseason rotation. He looked poised to build off it this year, after spinning six shutout innings against the St. Louis Cardinals in his season debut.
Two weeks later, however, Miller went down because of shoulder inflammation, missing more than two months. When he returned, he found his arm slot in his delivery had unintentionally shifted. His fastball command suffered. The consistency of his breaking pitches evaporated. And, in his final outing before being sent down, he gave up nine runs in four innings against the Philadelphia Phillies.
“It was like, ‘All right, my arm feels great, but I don’t know where the ball is going,’” Miller said. “It just kind of messed me up mentally.”
Whether Shohei Ohtani ever decides to exercise his influence could be determined by what the Dodgers do over the next handful of days and how it affects them in October.
So, Miller spent the final week before the All-Star break back in Los Angeles, working alongside Hill to recalibrate his mechanics.
“Literally within the first day, he showed me some new drills on how to stay looser when I throw and not tense up,” Miller said. “It just kind of had my arm feel like a whip again. That’s how it feels when I throw it really well.”
That translated to Miller’s first triple-A start on July 20, when he flashed an uptick in velocity and sharper secondary stuff in a scoreless five-inning start.
“That was a good step in the right direction,” manager Dave Roberts said.
“It was good to get him out of the big-league environment,” Prior added, “of where he’s got the pressure of trying to perform.”
This weekend both Miller and Buehler were scheduled to pitch for the club’s Oklahoma City affiliate, putting them on track to rejoin the roster early next month. The hope is that there’s still time for them to salvage their season and rediscover consistent production.
Given their talent and premium stuff, the club is optimistic they can work their way into its pitching plans for a potential postseason run.
Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto is confident he’ll return this season from a strained rotator cuff, but there’s a chance he might not be back.
With few impact starters available at the trade deadline, and injury questions continuing to surround Yoshinobu Yamamoto and others at the top of the rotation, Miller and Buehler have become something of a lottery ticket to the Dodgers’ World Series chances — potentially representing the club’s best chance to significantly bolster the rotation.
Ultimately, that’s where both want to end up — even if getting there has taken them in different directions, and led to midseason resets of drastically different styles.
“I feel a lot more encouraged in terms of, mentally, [having] the knowledge of the delivery,” Buehler said.
“This is gonna be a huge motivator for me moving forward,” Miller added. “Maybe going through this is gonna make me even better than I was before.”
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