Kansas City Royals: Five Realistic Starting Pitcher Free Agent Targets

Wade Miley

Technically, Baltimore has a team option to keep Wade Miley for 2018. Choosing to exercise that option would cost the team $12 million; declining it would lead to a $500,000 buyout. According to Eduardo A. Encina of the Baltimore Sun, the club considered keeping Miley until an atrocious September but now look likely to pay him half-a-million dollars to leave.

Miley clearly hasn’t carried over the success he had with the Diamondbacks since coming to the AL. It’s possible he would prefer a trip back to the senior circuit after difficult stops in Boston, Seattle and Baltimore. However, the Kansas City Royals, as mentioned before, could be in the market for a left-handed pitcher as a like-for-like replacement for Vargas. The options for such are limited.

In 2017, Miley made 32 starts and finished with an ugly 8-15 record. His 5.61 ERA and 1.73 WHIP are definite eyesores. The thing that hurt Miley time and again this past season was walks. He issued a league-high 93 free passes, which continuously shot his pitch count up in the opening few innings. There’s hope the walk issues were an anomaly as the 93 were almost twice as many as the 49 he had in 2016.

Despite his rough overall numbers, Miley actually got off to a great start to the season. It wasn’t until his eighth start of the year that Miley allowed more than three earned runs in a game. After a win over the Red Sox on June 1, he had a 2.82 ERA following seven innings of one-run ball. The wheels came off after that, though. He only pitched one game of at least seven innings the rest of the way.