Mariners' Bryce Miller injury truth bomb should jeopardize his rotation spot

The news that the Seattle Mariners offered on Bryce Miller on Tuesday is ostensibly good. As scary as it sounded when he went on the injured list with elbow inflammation, the expectation now is that he'll be activated during the club's current nine-game homestand.

At the same time, Miller's status keeps getting weirder and is barely less alarming than it seemed on Monday. At the very least, the situation ought to have the team rethinking its plans for the starting rotation going forward.

As relayed by Daniel Kramer of MLB.com, Mariners general manager Justin Hollander revealed Tuesday that the right-handed Miller has a bone spur at the back of his pitching elbow. It's what was causing the inflammation.

The underlying issue with Bryce Miller's elbow is not going away

As transcribed by Kramer, here's what Hollander had to say about the 26-year-old Miller's elbow:

"We felt like he needed to go on the IL for inflammation — not because the spur existed, but because there was some inflammation. We feel like we've taken care of that now. He feels good, so we don't anticipate any further management of that. As we go, obviously you want to make sure that he's not feeling pain or uncomfortable or there's any further inflammation. But we feel like we're in a good place right now."

Justin Hollander

An update like this felt inevitable as far back as Sunday, when Miller alluded to "something in there that causes inflammation and something I can't just take out without missing the rest of the year" during a meeting with reporters. At that point, the only question was whether the "it" was a bone spur or a bone fragment.

That it is a spur is not the worst development. A spur is a smooth, round growth on the surface of a bone, whereas a fragment is a cracked piece of existing bone. The latter is what Spencer Strider had in his pitching elbow last year, and the way in which it compromised his ulnar-collateral ligament is what necessitated his season-ending surgery.

Even still, the Mariners' outlook on Miller feels overly optimistic. If the inflammation has subsided but the cause of it is still there, then what are the odds the inflammation will return once he starts pitching again? And from Miller's comments on Sunday, it's apparent that surgery is the only surefire way the spur is going to go away.

If the Mariners were so thin on pitching depth that they had no choice but to keep running Miller out there every fifth day, that would be one thing. But they do have pitching depth, and particularly once Miller and Logan Gilbert come off the injured list.

A better way to use Bryce Miller

When that point comes, the Mariners could simply go back to a five-man rotation consisting of the two of them plus Bryan Woo, George Kirby, and Luis Castillo. Yet given how well Emerson Hancock and especially Logan Evans have pitched of late, it's no wonder that the team has considered a six-man rotation.

It's a novel concept, but it would take starts away from Gilbert, Kirby, Woo, and Castillo. The first three are among the best pitchers in baseball when they're healthy and clicking, while Castillo is aging better than he has any right to. And for his part, Evans has earned the right to keep taking turns by way of a 2.83 ERA through his first six career starts.

So, here's our modest proposal for Miller: What if he became a multi-inning fireman out of the bullpen?

Given that he led all Mariners pitchers with 3.4 rWAR just last year, he's frankly overqualified for that kind of role. But he was a different sort of pitcher prior to going on the IL this year, typically starting strong and then powering down:

• 1st time through lineup: .532 OPS
• 2nd time through lineup: .677 OPS
• 3rd time through lineup: .945 OPS

These splits are mirrored in his pitch count splits, as he held hitters to a .532 OPS through 25 pitches before eventually getting shelled for a 1.000 OPS after his 76th pitch.

In theory, the value of having a guy like this in the bullpen is that he could take the ball whenever a starter puts forth an effective, yet pitch-intensive performance. The Mariners have had a knack for these in 2025, with taxing five- or six-inning outings coming a lot more frequently than dominant starts of seven-plus innings.

In instances of shorter outings, Miller could come in to either get the ball to Andrés Muñoz or take it the rest of the way himself. He would just have to be used relatively sparingly, as any role that would require him to throw more pitches in a week than he otherwise would as a starter wouldn't be much use in protecting his elbow.

What seems for sure either way is that the Mariners simply reinserting Miller into the rotation and hoping his elbow behaves would be a case of trying the same thing and hoping for a different result. We all know how that usually goes.