Diamondbacks’ Wade Miley looks to eliminate the bad inning
Feb 19, 2014, 5:00 PM | Updated: 5:00 pm
Lost amid the Arizona Diamondbacks’ collapse in 2013 was how pitcher Wade Miley rebounded from a poor start to finish with another solid season.
The left-hander who won 16 games with a 3.33 ERA in 2012 followed a good April with a disastrous month of May, going 1-5 with a 7.34 ERA.
Miley had given up seven earned runs in back-to-back starts against the Padres and Cubs, and it looked like his entire season was about to go off the rails.
However, Miley rebounded in a big way, and finished the season with 10 wins to go along with a very respectable 3.55 ERA.
“I wasn’t pleased with the year I had,” Miley told Doug and Wolf on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM Wednesday. “I think things got better at the end but I just kind of held onto that one month where I just struggled so bad.
“And that ate at me all offseason.”
Miley said it’s important to focus on the good things that happened, too, but ultimately it’s about making sure he’s able to overcome any future struggles more quickly than he did last year.
Now 27 and entering his third full major league season, Miley said that he is entering spring training with the goal of sharpening his repertoire over the next month or so.
“Some guys create a new pitch or work on a new pitch,” he said. “I’m just trying to sharpen everything up, kind of hit the ground running when the season starts and feel good about it, look back knowing that I feel great and I did everything I could to be prepared.”
When asked what he’s looking to improve on this season, he said he’d like to eliminate the bad innings that plagued him some last year.
“There’s always starts out there where you go two innings and you’re sitting in the locker room for the other seven, and you’re like, ‘Why,'” he said. “I just want to eliminate some of those — maybe only have three of those rather than seven, and I think that will help the ball club out.”
Once again Miley is entrenched as a member of the team’s starting rotation, and along with Patrick Corbin is one of two lefties the team plans on using every fifth day.
As such, chances are he can afford to have a bad outing or two and not worry about his role with the team. But yeah, he wouldn’t mind being more consistent.
“I think it’s just a focus thing,” he admitted. “It’s not your stuff. You lose confidence when you’re struggling, and you’ve just got to get back on board and find a way to win again.”
