Baseball: McHenry grad Bobby Miller finds himself right at home with the Dodgers

Of all the knowledge Bobby Miller accrued in the past 10 months as a major league pitcher, one of the most valuable lessons is having a short memory.

“Whether it’s a good or bad outing, you just have to say, ‘Screw it. On to the next,’ " Miller said. “Whether it’s good or bad. Don’t focus on that too much. You can’t keep thinking about it. Next task at hand. Just focus on today.”

The Los Angeles Dodgers’ hard-throwing righthander, a 2017 McHenry graduate, had his best major league outing in his first start of the season, striking out 11 St. Louis Cardinals and allowing two hits in six innings of a 6-3 victory.

On Friday, Miller struggled through his worst outing on his 25th birthday, lasting 1 2/3 innings in a 9-7 loss to the Cubs at Wrigley Field. He struck out the side in the first, but allowed five earned runs in the second.

It was disappointing, with 31 of Miller’s family members and friends in the stands. But the 6-foot-5, 220-pounder, who averaged 99.1 mph on his fastballs, knows he can’t dwell on that.

Miller was called up last May when the Dodgers experienced injury problems in their rotation and he thrived quickly. He won three of his first four decisions, allowing only two runs in his first four starts, and finished the season 11-4 with a 3.76 ERA.

“It’s been awesome, it’s been amazing,” Miller said Saturday in Wrigley’s visiting clubhouse. “The best part of it all is being around the guys every day, the guys have treated me very well, especially last year coming in as a rookie. That was really nice. The best part is being around these guys.”

As Miller says that, Dodgers second baseman Gavin Lux playfully listened and rubbed Miller’s neck. Miller considers Lux and pitchers Gavin Stone and Emmet Sheehan (now on the 60-day IL) and catcher Austin Barnes as some of his closest friends.

Miller was second in wins (tied with Julio Urias behind Clayton Kershaw’s 13) and third in strikeouts last season. He was a vital part of the NL West Division champs’ rotation. After two starts, he is 1-1 with a 5.87 ERA and 14 strikeouts in 7 2/3 innings.

Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior is pleased with how far Miller has come since becoming a major leaguer. He considered Friday’s outing an “outlying situation.”

“Last year the timeline was a little quicker than everybody expected,” Prior said. “But he stepped in in Atlanta and his debut was pretty special to watch. He’s had really good growth.

“Even talking to him after yesterday, some days you just don’t have it and the strike zone was elusive for him at times. Things could have been different. The big thing for us was it didn’t speed up. When I went out to visit, I could see the heartbeat was still good, the focus was still good, where I think last year there was moments where you could see the game speeding up and snowballing for him. That’s where he’s taking a lot of strides in this calendar year.”

Miller was listed with the fourth-fastest fastball in the majors in 2023 (99.1 mph). That was first among starting pitchers.

“The physical talent everybody knows about,” Prior said. “That’s usually what separates guys who end up sticking and performing at this level. The emotional parts of the game are difficult. It’s a hard competition and the game’s really hard, I think that’s where he’s taken tremendous strides.

“[The conversation] was get back to basics. He was coming off one of the best starts of his career, so we’ve been both ends of the spectrum. It’s trying to find the lanes. You have to be gritty and grind out some starts. Those are usually what separates the elite from the guys who are hanging on. We’ve seen games last year where he didn’t have his best stuff, but he got you five and gave the team a chance to win the ballgame.”

Miller, the 2017 Northwest Herald Player of the Year, was taken 29th overall by the Dodgers in the 2020 MLB First-Year Player Draft. He played three seasons at Louisville after high school and came to professional ball touching 100 mph on speed guns.

Miller was fortunate that he joined a club that has won 10 of the past 11 NL West Division titles and spends freely to acquire some of the top talent in the game. With the versatile Mookie Betts, first baseman Freddie Freeman and offseason acquisition DH Shohei Ohtani, who also will pitch next year after recovering from Tommy John surgery, the Dodgers have three legitimate NL MVP candidates.

Los Angeles also added another Japanese star, righthander Yoshinobu Yamamoto, in the offseason, and will get Kershaw and starter Walker Buehler (recovering from elbow surgery) back at some point.

Miller is fine with the Dodgers being under pressure to be the best.

“It’s really awesome. It’s a lot of different looks in the clubhouse as well, there’s a lot more media and everything,” Miller said. “There’s a lot more expectations this year, which is right. There should be more expectations. It’s nothing new to us. We expect to go and win every single day.

“We expect to see the other team’s best game every day. Baseball is filled with so many uncertainties. You never know what can happen. The biggest thing is to not take anybody lightly, know we’re going to get their best, and go out there and expect to win every day.”

Miller signed his rookie deal for $2,424,600, which takes him through the 2029 season. He was able to see his parents, Bob and Tracy, along with a sister, aunts and uncles and friends for his birthday, while pitching in the ballpark of his favorite team while growing up.

Miller’s fans will need to buy new jerseys this season, as he changed his number from 70 to 28 this season. J.D. Martinez wore 28 for the Dodgers last season.

“I’ve always liked 28,” he said. “I wanted to move down from 70 if it was possible, as long as I have a jersey to put on I’m happy.”

The Dodgers are happy for him to be in their jersey. Prior said Miller is working on a slider to add to his fastball, curveball, changeup mix, but that most of Miller’s offseason work was just preparing for his first full major league season.

“To his credit, he’s always in great shape,” Prior said. “He got slowed a little with his shoulder [at the beginning of] last year, but he’s really making sure he’s on top of things he needs to do to be successful. You run so much on adrenaline the first year. That second year, it’s a long season and understanding this is a long season.”

Miller welcomes the long season and all of its challenges, with a short memory.

“You get a lot more chances out there,” he said. “There’s 162 games. That’s something I’ve always tried to get better at my whole life, and I’m getting better and better at it. Each year it’s part of the growing process.”