Blast From the Past: Stu Miller 1958

One of the more interesting things I have noted in researching these historical posts is the tremendous differences in how pitching staffs were managed in the 1950's compared to the 21'st century game.  You would think that with 4 man rotations and the emphasis on complete games, there would be an even clearer demarcation between SP's and RP's.  Not so.  For example, the three main SP's for the 1958 Giants were Johnny Antonelli, Ruben Gomez and Mike McCormick who started 34, 30 and 28 games respectively.  Antonelli and Gomez both threw over 200 innings.  Yet Antonelli, Gomez and McCormick appeared 7, 12 and 14 times in relief respectively while Antonelli earned 3 Saves with 1 each for Gomez and McCormick.

Marv Grissom served as a classic Closer making zero starts with 51 relief appearances finishing 35 games while earning 11 Saves.  The rest of the pitching staff would be described as swingmen who divided up starts and relief appearances.  The most remarkable of these was Stu Miller, a diminutive RHP whose stuff was described by sportswriter Jim Murray as "slow, slower and reverse."  His best pitch was a changeup which Murray described as a "butterfly."  Miller did not like these characterizations and insisted that he threw a standard repertoire of fastball, curve and straight change.  He reasoned that his fastball had to be better than credited or the other two pitches would not have been effective.  Miller also resented jokes about his size and disputed that he was ever blown off the mound in Candlestick Park, but that is a story for another post.

Stu Miller came up through the Cardinals organization but after NL hitters got used to his stuff, he struggled with high ERA's and was eventually traded to the Phillies who quickly gave up on him.  He found his way to the New York Giants in 1957 where Bill Rigney found a role for him pitching out of the bullpen.  Throughout his career, Miller had more success out of the bullpen than as a starter, but he was so good and so durable that he was often pressed into service as a SP.  That was the case in 1958 where he made 21 relief appearances and 20 starts for a total of 182 IP and a league-leading 2.47 ERA.  Al Worthington, Ramon Monzant and Paul Giel were used in a similar manner with 12, 16 and 9 starts and 42, 27 and 20 relief appearances respectively with less success.

Miller would pitch a total of 6 seasons for the Giants through their pennant winning run in 1962 before being traded to the Orioles.  He went on to pitch 5 seasons with the Orioles and was a major contributor to their 1966 championship run.  After retirement, he settled in Cameron Park, CA with his wife Jayne.  They died in 2015 one month apart after 62 years of marriage.

*Biographical information gleaned from SABR and stats from Baseball Reference, both sites linked to the left.