Cleveland Indians: Andrew Miller is Baseball’s Most Lethal Reliever

The most feared reliever in the game wears a Cleveland Indians uniform. Just how important has Andrew Miller been in the postseason?

There’s a reason the Cleveland Indians gave up two of their top four prospects on July 31st to acquire Andrew Miller in a deadline trade with the New York Yankees, and the entire baseball world got a taste of it on Friday night in Game One of the ALCS.

Miller retired five Toronto batters in the seventh and eighth innings, a high-leverage situation that went right through the heart of the Blue Jays’ order. He struck out all five, three swinging, two looking, all on his slider.

“For him to go through the middle of the order like that, that’s why we got him,” Cleveland manager Terry Francona said after the game.

All apologies to Zach Britton of the Baltimore Orioles, but Miller is the most filthy, most feared, most effective reliever in the game, and it’s really not that close. The 31-year old appeared for the Indians anywhere from the fifth to the ninth inning during the final two months of the regular season, yielding a .139/.155/.277 opponent slash line, a 44.7% strikeout percentage, and a 23-to-1 strikeout to walk ratio.

And he’s done it all with just two pitches. Two pitches that hitters know are coming and are still defenseless against. His slider maybe the most fearsome pitch in Major League Baseball, ahead of even Aroldis Chapman’s 100+ mile per hour fastball.

"Andrew Miller’s slider is a real demon, spawned on the banks of the Styx, sent to earth to terrorize, confound and bedevil, especially in October, where it was unleashed 19 times in Game 1 of the American League Championship Series to a Toronto Blue Jays squad that stared at it in disbelief when it wasn’t swinging with all the efficacy of a man who’d slugged a case of Molson and been spun a dozen times before taking whacks at a shoebox-sized piñata."

That quote comes from Yahoo! Sports national baseball writer Jeff Passan, and it’s the closest I’ve seen to anyone doing justice to just how nasty Miller’s slider is.

What makes the pitch so impressive is how effective it is in generating swings and misses from batters on both sides of the plate, even when those players know it’s coming. In October, Miller has thrown the slider more than 63 percent of the time, and yet still generates a “whiff” nearly a quarter of the time, and an isolated power of just .050.

“He’s tough,” Jose Bautista, one of the five strikeout victims in Game One, said of Miller. “He’s a two-pitch guy that’s dominant because they’re both plus-pitches. He’s deceptive, and he was getting ahead early and then working us around the edges and spinning off that slider.”

Miller has now thrown 5.2 scoreless innings in the postseason, allowing just three hits. Of the 17 outs he has recorded, 12 have come via the punchout. His work against Toronto was a microcosm of how big of a weapon he is for Francona and the Indians.

“Miller is just one of those guys,” Perez said, “you get him in rhythm, he’s going to strike you out.”

Next: 3 Reasons the Indians Will Beat Toronto

The Tribe is now just three wins away from a trip to the World Series, but things will only get tougher from here on out. The Jays won’t go down without a fight, and unfortunately Miller may not be physically capable of replicating his Game One performance in every game. But he helps Cleveland’s chances of once again defying the odds. The Indians have baseball’s most lethal mound weapon, and they could ride his left arm all the way to the Fall Classic.