TORONTO — Bryce Miller could feel the game speeding up on him.
A raucous sellout crowd in the Rogers Centre, already amped up from George Springer’s homer on Miller’s first pitch of the game, was redlining toward full celebratory eruption.
He had already lost a 12-pitch battle, walking Nathaniel Lukes. His only out came on Vlad Guerrero Jr.’s 107-mph line drive to Julio Rodríguez in center field. When he walked Addison Barger on five pitches, manager Dan Wilson was starting to consider his options in the bullpen, while the Blue Jays were one swing away from delivering a roundhouse punch in the first inning.
Cal Raleigh went to the mound to talk to his starter. It was a relatively lengthy visit, forcing home plate umpire Ryan Additon to come break it up.
Was Raleigh trying to calm his starting pitcher down? Was he going over strategy? Was he trying to instill confidence in Miller?
“Um, I don’t even remember that conversation,” Miller said. “I don’t know. It was a hectic inning. He usually doesn’t have much to say. He comes out and sometimes he thinks he has jokes, and I will give him a courtesy laugh or a little chuckle and then settle back down. But he’s always been really good with the timing of them — when to come out and when he knows that we need to slow down and get us back in the zone. I don’t remember the convo at all, but I’m sure that’s how it went.”
Raleigh, of course, remembered the conversation.
“It was kind of a tough way to start the game,” Raleigh said. “I just thought he was being a little picky. I told him to just trust his stuff.”
After Raleigh returned to the plate, Miller retired Alejandro Kirk and Daulton Varsho to end the first inning. He’d escaped while allowing just the one run.
“I came in and looked and saw I’d thrown 27 pitches in the first, I was like, ‘We’re going to have to figure it out here,’” Miller said.
And he did.
Working on three days rest for the first time in his career, Miller delivered one of the best outings of his career. He allowed just two base runners — a double and a walk — over the next five innings to lead the Mariners to a stunning 3-1 victory over the Blue Jays in Game 1 of the American League Championship Series.
His final line: six innings pitched, one run allowed on two hits with three walks and three strikeouts.
“The job that Bryce Miller did tonight was phenomenal,” said manager Dan Wilson. “I thought after that first inning, he went into a different gear, and you saw him getting ahead using all his stuff.”
Going into the game Wilson was hoping to get four innings out of Miller, who threw 55 pitches in Wednesday’s loss to Detroit and was one of the few pitchers that wasn’t used in the marathon Game 5 victory over the Tigers.
The first inning had Wilson concerned.
“That could have exploded pretty quickly,” Wilson said.
But it didn’t. Miller needed a total of 23 pitches to get through second, third and fourth inning.
“There were few short innings there, and I felt like I was rolling after that,” Miller said.
Did he know the expectation was only four innings?
“They didn’t tell me anything, any plan,” he said. “So I was going to go there and let it rip till they came out and got me.”
Wilson never had to go out and get his starter. Instead, he gave Miller a handshake after working a scoreless sixth inning that included retiring Guerrero and Kirk.
“The fastball kept coming out really good,” Wilson said. “It was one of those situations where you knew the bullpen was ready to bail him out at any time. But the fastball just kept coming out, and he kept throwing the ball so well. To give us six strong innings, especially coming out of that first inning, to close the door was phenomenal.”
Miller’s fastball averaged 96 mph in the game, which was up almost two miles per hour from the regular season. But it was the usage of his secondary pitches that was critical.
“The last few weeks it’s been something I’ve been focusing on,” he said. “As the year has gone on, I kind of got away from throwing off-speed in the zone and attacking with those pitches. And it makes things a whole lot easier whenever I’m not just a fastball/splitter.”
In a year where he’s dealt with an extended stint on the injured list due to bone spurs and discomfort in his elbow and some inconsistency when returned to the mound, the performance was gratifying.
“It feels great,” he said. “The year, personally, didn’t go how I had planned and how I’d hoped for. But we’re in the ALCS, and I got to go out there and set the tone, and I felt great. Arm, body, mentally, everything feels really good right now, so I couldn’t ask for anything more.”