Mariners' Bryce Miller has a new pitch that could be a double whammy for Astros

Despite their success last year, the Mariners don't have a shortage of bounceback candidates for 2026. In the lineup, a close eye will be kept on Victor Robles and Luke Raley, both of whom had disappointing 2025 campaigns. On the pitching staff, Bryce Miller has a similar burden of proof.

After posting an impressive 2.94 ERA and 3.58 FIP in 2024, it seemed like he had already blossomed into an elite rotation arm. However, an injury-riddled 2025 prevented him from being his best on the mound and after just 90.1 innings of work, Miller finished the season with a 5.68 ERA and 5.17 FIP.

The offseason is the perfect time to make adjustments to one's arsenal, and that's exactly what he did this winter. Last year, the majority of his pitches had less than 12 inches of horizontal movement with the exception of his sinker. Now, he's working on adding two pitches to spread the zone laterally in the other direction and he has a familiar foe to thank for it.

Bryce Miller has been emulating Bryan Abreu's slider after seeing his pitch grip posted on social media

Ryan Divish of The Seattle Times recently published a report on what Miller has been up to this spring and aside from bulking up his wiry frame, it seems like he's trying to rediscover what made him great during his sophomore campaign. The velocity on his four-seam fastball is reportedly back in the high-90s and to complement his heater, he's working on adding back his cutter and refining his slider.

He modeled his slider grip after Bryan Abreu, a longtime Astros reliever who has consistently had one of the most effective sliders in the sport. Last year, it had an opposing SLG of just .290 and a whiff rate of 46.1 percent. Miller's slider, on the other hand, had an opposing SLG of .438 with a whiff rate of 39.2 percent.

When it comes to their shapes, Abreu's slider moves significantly more than Miller's, whose movement is right around league-average on both axes. Compared to the league average, Abreu's slider has eight more inches of drop and four more inches of horizontal run, a major component of his success.

Miller had a hard time expanding the strike zone last year. He gave up plenty of hard contact (48.6 hard-hit rate, 2nd percentile) without a lot of opposing hitters chasing pitches (25.7 chase rate, 20th percentile). More movement on his slider should complement his existing arsenal of fastballs and his splitter, giving him more opportunities to tunnel pitches and fool batters.

Miller isn't the only starting pitcher that needs to prove himself a little more this spring, but he's arguably the most important. He started the offseason on the right foot by managing to avoid elbow injury, but he'll have to stay healthy if he wants to prove to Seattle that the future of their rotation is safe. The idea of losing Logan Gilbert and George Kirby to free agency may seem like a scary notion, but it doesn't have to be if the team gets the Bryce Miller they saw for 31 starts just two years ago.