There’s no bigger target on the relief market than A’s breakout closer Mason Miller. The All-Star righty begins the second half with a 2.27 earned run average through 39 2/3 innings. He has punched out 70 of 150 opponents (an absurd 46.7% rate) while locking down 15 of 17 save chances. Miller might be the most dominant relief force in the league at the moment.
Oakland general manager David Forst will receive no shortage of trade calls over the next week and a half. Jon Heyman of the New York Post wrote last night that the Orioles are among the teams with interest in Miller. Heyman adds that Baltimore also remains connected to old friend Tanner Scott, to whom they’ve been linked for the better part of two months. The O’s are generally expected to land a high-leverage reliever who can either supplant Craig Kimbrel as closer or bridge the gap to the ninth inning.
The Marlins will almost certainly deal Scott, an impending free agent, by July 30. It’d be significantly harder to pry Miller from the A’s. He’s under club control for five seasons after this one. Even a rebuilding team is under no pressure to move him. Robert Murray of FanSided wrote this evening that executives outside of Oakland remain skeptical that the A’s will deal Miller. They’ll have an exorbitant asking price, at the very least.
Miller’s injury history is the main argument for the A’s to move him this summer. The 25-year-old missed most of the 2022 season battling shoulder problems. He lost the bulk of the ’23 campaign to a UCL sprain in his elbow. Miller throws as hard as anyone in baseball and has had a pair of extended arm-related absences within the last three years. There’s clearly some level of risk that he suffers another injury. The A’s are unlikely to be competitive before the 2026 season at the earliest, so Miller could make more of an immediate impact on a team with nearer playoff aspirations.
Yet as appealing as Miller already is as an elite closer, there’s a chance he improves his value even more in the next year or two. Miller was a starting pitcher in the minors and for his first few weeks in the big leagues. Oakland moved him to the bullpen this year as a means of keeping his innings in check. Forst said at the time of the bullpen transfer that the A’s might stretch Miller back out as a starter in 2025. It’d be tempting to keep him in the bullpen now that the team has seen how dominant he is in that role, but no one has ruled out a return to starting. Miller told USA Today’s Bob Nightengale last week that he’s not closing off the possibility of moving back to the rotation in ’25 or beyond.
Garrett Crochet has dramatically elevated his trade value with three months of ace production. There’s no guarantee Miller would take to a rotation move the way that Crochet has, of course, but it’s not hard to see the potential for him to be an impact starter. If he ran with a rotation opportunity next season, he’d further elevate his stock both within the organization and on the trade market.