Blake Snell’s role as rebounding Dodgers pitcher’s mentor may change rotation outlook

One of the most confounding storylines from the Dodgers' 2024 season was what happened to Bobby Miller.

His rookie season the year before, when he pitched 124 1/3 innings for a 3.76 ERA, left his Baseball Savant page covered in red and generated a lot of hype for his sophomore campaign. At the beginning of 2024, the rotation had changed a lot — LA added Tyler Glasnow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, and James Paxton, and Gavin Stone had only pitched a rough 31 innings in 2023 — but Miller seemed like a safe, known quantity at the middle.

His first start in 2024 might've been the best of his career. He pitched six shutout innings against the Cardinals and struck out 11 batters, a career-high. But then things got very bad, very quickly. In his next start, he was pulled after 1 2/3 innings after giving up five earned runs.

He was moved to the injured list after just three starts, then came back two months later only to make four more (for a 9.87 ERA) and then get sent down to the minors. He came back to the majors for a month, from mid-August to mid-September, when the Dodgers' rotation was battered with injuries, but he finished the year in Triple-A.

It was confounding, but new Dodger Blake Snell wants to fix him. He said during DodgerFest this weekend that he'd be mentoring Miller throughout the year.

Blake Snell pledges himself as mentor to Bobby Miller after awful 2024 season with Dodgers

Miller's decline couldn't have happened at a worse time for the Dodgers. Tyler Glasnow and Walker Buehler were on and off the IL, Yoshinobu Yamamoto missed a large chunk of the summer, and James Paxton was traded at the deadline. When he was called back up in August, it was because the Dodgers really had no other choice, and he just couldn't rise to the challenge.

His velocity was down across the board in 2024, and his sinker, which he'd relied on second-most behind his fastball in 2023, started to get lit up in 2024. His changeup remained elite (.130 batting average against in 2024, .133 in 2023), but everything else in his arsenal went the wrong way.

If Snell is able to get Miller back into fighting form, it could change the look of the rotation in 2025 and give the Dodgers a few tough decisions to make. Dustin May and Tony Gonsolin are almost certainly going to the bullpen or being traded when Shohei Ohtani and Clayton Kershaw return, and Miller could stay there with them, in reserve for a start now and then if a guy needs a rest day or if more pitchers hit the IL.

But it's a good thing all-around if Snell helps Miller figure a few things out. The Dodgers don't have a great recent track record when it comes to developing players who are built to last in the majors, so he could either stay in the organization as a shining example of their success or be dangled as trade bait, as the Dodgers are so often wont to do.