PHOENIX — As the Los Angeles Dodgers sent shockwaves throughout the sport this last November, a promising piece of their future took to Instagram. Bobby Miller did not know Blake Snell at all, but the mutual admiration went beyond just pleasantries as Miller typed a direct message to the two-time Cy Young winner and his new teammate. As Miller welcomed the latest Dodgers star addition, someone he’d come to admire, Snell’s response was simple.
“Let’s get it.”
Miller endured a miserable season in 2024. His shoulder ached. His mechanics fell out of whack. By season’s end, a team scrambling for starting pitching deemed him incapable of holding down a spot in their postseason rotation. A year after being the Dodgers’ Game 2 starter, the team won the World Series without Miller on the postseason roster for any series.
Still, Snell always admired the right-hander. He saw a quiet, curious, talented pitcher who hadn’t quite harnessed his ability. Snell signed sometime around Thanksgiving and not long after that met Miller in person. Their connection has become an early talking point for manager Dave Roberts, even amid a star-packed camp for the reigning champions.
“I can see it in the way that he looks at the game, views the game,” Snell said of Miller. “I see how he wants to be great. I see that in a lot of that stuff.”
Bobby Miller’s facing hitters. Blake Snell is observing alongside Mark Prior. Miller’s apparently been leaning on his new teammate this spring. pic.twitter.com/JwtpWZRqu6
— Fabian Ardaya (@FabianArdaya) February 15, 2025
So as they intersected while working out together this winter in Arizona at the Dodgers’ facility, Snell warned Miller that he’d be attached to his side all spring.
“That kind of fired me up a little bit,” Miller said. “Coming from a guy like him, two-time Cy Young winner. … He’s been taking me under his wing which I’m really thankful for.”
When Snell requested his locker stall, he wanted it next to Clayton Kershaw’s — and next to Miller’s. Kershaw watched Snell’s first bullpen session as a Dodger, the starter with three Cy Young Awards keen to observe the guy with two. A few days later, it was Snell’s turn to watch Miller. Snell was there in a hoodie, sweatpants and sneakers, standing next to pitching coaches Mark Prior and Connor McGuiness behind Miller as he faced hitters. After the session, Snell walked over and counseled the 25-year-old right-hander, noting that he’d seen him express frustration after a pair of yanked fastballs and advising him to rein it in.
“We’ve just been talking about the little things,” Miller said.
So many little things piled up for Miller this time a year ago. A promising rookie campaign and a tantalizing package of size (6-foot-5, 220 pounds), premium velocity and diverse arsenal seemingly had Miller positioned for a leap to stardom. His season debut appeared to back up that notion, with Miller putting together the finest performance of his career with 11 strikeouts over six scoreless innings against St. Louis.
But his shoulder hurt, a flareup after the Dodgers’ early start to the season in Korea in March. It took two miserable starts through the pain for Miller to land on the injured list. He never quite got right afterwards. The pain in his shoulder led to bad mechanics in his delivery. The cascading effect impacted his command and velocity. After regularly sitting near triple digits with an average fastball velocity of 99 mph as a rookie, that figure dropped to 97.6 mph a year ago. The pitch doesn’t generate swing-and-miss as it is, and became much more hittable — and put into bad spots — along with the loss of a couple of ticks of velo.
Even as the Dodgers scrambled for starters, Miller pitched his way out of the rotation. He was sent down to the minors for good in September, having registered an 8.52 ERA in 13 starts that ranked dead last among the 170 starters with at least 50 innings pitched. By FanGraphs WAR, only two starting pitchers were worse than last year than Miller (-0.9 fWAR): Miami’s Roddery Muñoz (-1.6) and Cleveland’s Triston McKenzie (-1.0).
“It wasn’t right,” Miller said of the shoulder, which the Dodgers have repeatedly stressed this winter is now healthy. “Obviously I didn’t need surgery or anything. But it wasn’t feeling right.
“At the end of the day, I was physically able to pitch, so there’s no excuse that I can make. Just poor execution on my part is what it really comes down to and not having my normal pitch mix and command that I had the year before.”
Miller said a winter of physical therapy and rest rejuvenated his shoulder. His mechanics appear to be in a better spot, and with it, the velocity has rebounded. More than anything, he said, he got a mental reset — a mindset that Snell himself backed up.
“I don’t live in the past,” Snell said. “He shouldn’t either. Last year, you learn from and then focus on what he’s doing. He’ll learn. He’s such an amazing talent. I don’t ask him what he did last year because I don’t care. I think what he’s gonna do is way more important than what happened. Learn from it, get better, whatever it was going bad and then this year is this year. Be ready for it.”
Much has changed over the last 12 months, his new teammates among them. Snell is expected to anchor a rotation bursting at the seams in talent but teeming with question marks. The winner of two ERA titles is expected to carry the load, but it’s not as if Miller is well-positioned to be among the names behind him right now.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto is set to have the Opening Day assignment. Roki Sasaki, the hard-throwing rookie right-hander from Japan, is expected to follow him in the season-opening series in Tokyo. Tyler Glasnow has been deemed to have a clean bill of health after elbow trouble cost him a postseason run and still is being paid to be a frontline starter. The decision to run a five-man rotation before Shohei Ohtani’s return from a second elbow surgery essentially pits Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May against each other in their respective returns from injury.
That leaves little room on paper for Miller.
“We all know how talented Bobby is, but Bobby’s got to be good,” Roberts said. “He’s got to be healthy, and he’s got to perform.”
Which has made Miller’s bond with Snell an encouraging one.
“I think that Blake is tapping into the mental side of that (with Bobby), and there’s not a much more powerful thing that can come from a guy who’s won Cy Youngs,” Roberts said. “I’m sure some of the messaging is just be good, worry about yourself, and when your time comes, be ready.”
(Photo of Bobby Miller: Joe Camporeale / Imagn Images)
