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College  | Story  | 2/18/2019

College Notes: February 17

Vincent Cervino      Mike Rooney     
Photo: Erik Miller (Stanford Athletics)

College Notes: Feb. 15 | Feb. 16 | College Player Database | Weekend Preview | College Preview Index

Players covered: Erik Miller (Stanford), Will Matthiessen (Stanford), Cooper Chandler (Pepperdine), Kumar Rocker (Vanderbilt), Jake Eder (Vanderbilt), Brandon Williamson (TCU), Jake Eissler (TCU), Noah Murdock (Virginia), Andrew Abbott (Virginia).




Erik Miller, Stanford
One of the top pitching performances from the Angels College Classic in Arizona to open the 2019 season came from Stanford lefthanded pitcher Erik Miller as the large southpaw was terrific over five innings, allowing only one earned run and striking out nine while, and perhaps most importantly, only walking two. It wasn't the cleanest outing by any standard, as he needed 89 pitches to get through five innings, but Miller has some of the best raw stuff in the entire draft class and the more strikes he throws the higher his draft stock soars. 

The 6-foot-5, 240-pound prospect is a behemoth of a human being, with incredible size strength and even surprising athleticism as he moved off the mound more than a few times successfully to make tough plays. The lefthander throws exclusively from the stretch, something implemented to make it more simple for him to repeat, and the ball comes out of the hand cleanly and with very low effort.

A higher arm slot creates steep downhill plane from his already huge frame, making it tough to square up when he's effectively locating in the bottom third of the zone. The first inning gave a glimpse of just how dominant Miller can be in one inning stints as he sat 91-95 mph with his fastball and touched 97 mph on the first pitch of the game. The fastball eventually came down in terms of velocity, working mostly at 89-93 mph throughout the start, but he was able to ramp it back up when needed. One such example was when Miller was trying to finish off his final hitter of the game and went 94-94-95-95 before finishing things off with a changeup. Miller's fastball gets on hitters quickly too, as it's not just coming in hot, but he hides the ball throughout the arm stroke up until it's released out of the hand which makes it that much more terrifying. 

Miller's calling card though is his hammer slider and at least in the early portion of the game it was showing as a true plus pitch and ultimately looks like it belongs right up there with the likes of Graeme Stinson's (Duke) slider as one of the best breaking balls at the college level. The pitch sat in the 80-85 mph range with tremendous power, bite and sharp, late break. In the first two innings he used the pitch to record four of his five strikeouts and each swing looked just as helpless as the last. As the outing went on the pitch got slower in terms of velocity but it is a true weapon that gets hitters on both sides of the plate now and will once he's in the professional ranks as well. 

The changeup feel came and went but the pitch flashed some very hard running action, showing above average a handful of times, though it wasn't nearly consistent enough. It worked mostly at 82-86 mph on the day but the nastiest one he threw was an 88 mph hellraiser that was tipped into play and beat out for an infield single after Miller was ruled to have missed the bag while covering. The high potential of his third pitch is a nice omen for the rest of the profile as the ceiling is certainly there with room for further improvement. 

All in all this was about a good of a first start as you could hope for if you were Miller as he showed off the nasty stuff and threw enough strikes to keep a fiesty Pepperdine team at bay. Due to the delivery, length of the arm stroke and strike concerns there is reliever risk to his profile, but the stuff alone is seemingly worth a day one pick and he could really raise his stock with a good spring.


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