Starter Spotlight: Miles Markers

7-3-24 – By Michael Castrignano – @412DoublePlay on X

After falling short in game one, the Pirates will have to face off against Miles Mikolas, who had his best start of the season last time he faced the Bucs on June 11 with 7 innings of 1-hit shutout ball in his 2nd near no-hitter facing the Bucs. Maybe things go better this go-round?

We covered most of the major points in the previous preview and much of it continues to be true as, outside of his lone excellent outing against Pittsburgh, Mikolas has struggled to miss bats but continues throwing strikes – to mostly poor results. 

In his last start versus the Reds, Mikolas allowed 10 runs (9 earned) off 12 hits and 1 walk with just one strikeout in 4.1 innings. His fastballs have been his most used (25.9%: 4-seam/24.4%: sinker) but with drastically different results as his sinker has been a plus pitch and his 4-seamer has been increasingly hammered.

In that aforementioned Reds outing, Mikolas threw the 4-seamer 32 times out of 94 pitches, generating 14 swings and only one whiff; however, it was a lot of weak contact due to the low velocity (92.7 average MPH) creating an exit velocity of just 81 MPH – compared to his sinker, which was getting CRUSHED in that game at a 98 MPH EV clip.

Mikolas is going to throw strikes and a lot of them are going to look like meatballs. Bucs batters need to pick a pitch – any pitch – and just sit on it. The mistakes are going to be there and even with Mikolas’s excellent career numbers against the Pirates (2.90 ERA over 118 innings), they should be able to find a way to break through.

Let’s Go Bucs!