After bombing out in the Seattle Mariners
organization despite being given plenty of chances to show what he could do in
his three-season stay in the Pacific Northwest, it appeared as though former
2011 second-round pick Brad Miller’s major league career was already on life
support. Enter the Tampa Bay Rays who
never met a reclamation project they didn’t think they could fix and then sat
back and watched Miller slam 30 home runs (19 more than his previous high) for
the team in 2016. Say what? In what was clearly one of the most unexpectedly
great performances of the 2016 season, Miller literally crushed it for the Rays. In almost every way, Miller exceeded
expectations and his previous hitting rates by a mile and that is what makes
forecasting him for 2017 so difficult.
On the surface, it is easy to surmise the “outlier effect” that Miller’s
2016 qualifies for since he has never approached anything like that
before. In fact when coming up the
Seattle system, Miller was known more for a batting average talent and an
ability to go maybe 15/15 with his power/speed.
Now Miller doesn’t run much anymore (only 6 steals last season), the
average has been terrible from day 1 in the majors (.243 a year ago) but yet
the power exploded at an unfathomable rate.
It has become obvious that Miller is selling out for power like he never
did in the minors, with his 2016 K/9 rate of 24.8 percent showing how much he
is swinging for the fences. A .277 BABIP
was unlucky which means Miller could be more of a .260 hitter going forward but
either way it looks like it is home runs or bust now for the guy. That makes it somewhat of a razor thin margin
in terms of turning a profit on Miller for 2017 fantasy baseball. Either he replicates the production from last
season in the power department (which we have our extreme doubts about) or he
goes into the bust bin. There are too
many moving parts here for our liking so it is best if you avoid Miller
altogether.
2017 PROJECTION:
.257 24 HR 77 RBI 71 R 5 SB 
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