Padres Are Facing Major Issues With Mason Miller’s Workload

The San Diego Padres are in the middle of a pennant race, so there’s plenty of pressure to win every night. They’re currently a half game ahead of the Arizona Diamondbacks in the race for the third wild card, but if you blink and wait a day things could just as easily be the other way around. 

That means more pressure to use Mason Miller, which is a different matter entirely. Miller has been the Padres best player this season, and he’s the anchor of the team’s biggest strength, which is the best bullpen in baseball. 

But he’s relatively sanguine about this particular issue, as he noted in a piece about his workload written by Cole Bradley of MLB.com.

“It’s meaningful baseball in September, that’s all you ask for as a baseball player,” Miller said. “Regardless of what is happening and how we got here, this is the situation we’re in.”

The Padres have edged up to pushing Miller hard, but they haven’t gone over the top yet. He made a two-inning appearance last Friday against the New York Yankees, and he also made four appearances in five days for the second time during a stretch from Aug. 21-25, according to Cassavell, which is something else he’s never done before.  

The writer also noted that there’s another issue here, which is that Miller is creeping up on a career high in innings. He pitched 65 innings in 2024, and he’s just 3-2/3 shy of that number right now. He could easily blow past that threshold, but Miller pointed out that he’s made some important adjustments since then. 

“You take different years and you learn different things,” Miller said. “Two years ago was my career high in innings, but I only threw in 55 games. Last year I threw fewer innings, but I felt like I was pitching more, so it’s a little bit of a different animal. This year I feel like I’ve been able to keep my body feeling really good the entire season. It’s allowed me to pitch four out of five days for the first time, three days in a row.”

Fortunately, though, there’s a way out of this. The Padres have a deep bullpen, and many of their secondary relievers have stepped up to have outstanding outings when necessary. They’ve deepened what was an almost non-existent rotation not too long ago, and reliever Jason Adam is also expected to make his return from a shoulder issue. 

“We’ve kind of gotten here on the back of the bullpen, in a lot of ways,” Miller said. “It takes a complete team effort to win a game, but we’ve won a lot of close games, we feel comfortable playing in close games. I think we know more might be asked … but we’re prepared to go every night.”