Has Brad Miller "Figured It Out"?

No, he has not.*

A number of people have noted Brad Miller's June resurgence and expressed a good deal of optimism.  Some articles, including this one, view the recent performance as an indication of positive things to come.  Brad Miller is fixed!

Their enthusiasm is mostly unfounded, unfortunately.

Last season, Brad Miller put up +1.7 wins-above-replacement (WAR) in just 335 Plate Appearances (PAs).  Projected over a full season (600 PAs), that is +3.0 WAR.  According to Fangraphs, +3.0 WAR is somewhere between "Solid Starter" and "Good Player."  We'll take it!  For a rookie for which there were mixed expectations, you can't expect much better than that.

Then Brad Miller had an absolutely horrendous April and May to begin 2014, where he posted a +37 wRC+.  For comparison, Carlos Zambrano's career wRC+ was +57.  Carlos Zambrano was a pitcher.

But then, after April-May, Brad Miller decided to not totally suck.  Brad Miller has a June "slash line" of .278/.344/.444, good for a +116 wRC+.  +100 wRC+ is set exactly to "average," so Brad Miller has been 16% better than the average MLB hitter here in June.

Unfortunately, digging a bit deeper, we see that this June's performance provides little evidence that Brad Miller is "fixed." 

Here are the two reasons Brad Miller has not yet "figured it out" yet:

• Brad Miller's June BABIP is 0.342
• Brad Miller's June K% is 24.2%

The BABIP (batting average on balls in play) is not sustainable.  The typical BABIP league-wide is closer to 0.300, give or take, year-to-year.  Miller is getting more hits to fall in due to pure random statistical chance, than is typical.

Now, the first article I linked to at the top of this post argues against me here.  It notes that, if you observe a sample back a full 30 days (not just since the start of June), Miller's BABIP is 0.313, and his performance over that timeframe is still good.  So, an artificially high June BABIP shouldn't be a reason to expect regression to lower, worse performance going forward.

The problem with that logic is twofold:

• Firstly, that 0.313 BABIP is still too high. This year's American League BABIP is 0.297, and Miller's career BABIP is 0.273. 
• Secondly, I am definitely not trying to prove Miller sucks.  I am trying to find evidence he is fixed.  I note that he has been less lucky when you expand the sample size.  That is not evidence that he is fixed, in any way.

Now, let's move on.  We should never read too much into BABIP anyways.  BABIP is subject to wild fluctuations, even over the course of a full player-season worth of data. Let's move on to the second point, about K%.

K% is the more import reason Brad Miller isn't "fixed" yet. K% is simply defined as: strikeouts divided by PAs.  Here is a table:

Brad Miller is striking out way too much.  Still... even here in June.

K% is a reliable indicator of hitter performance, and it stabilizes quickly, unlike BABIP (link).  That means you don't need a large sample size before you can forecast a player's K% going forward.  You only need about 60 PAs. Brad Miller has had 62 PAs in June, as of this writing.

The American League's average K% in 2014 is 19.6%.  For his career, Brad Miller's K% is 19.4%.  This is a reason I am not giving up on Brad Miller.  The best evidence I have - the full sample of his career MLB data - says that he could be average in a lot of metrics.  An average MLB shortstop is a valuable asset.  An average MLB shortstop probably makes $10-15mm per season on the open market.

But Miller's K% here in 2014 is near 25%.  Even in June, Miller is above 24%.  This doesn't lend credence to the idea that June has "fixed" him.

I am rooting for Miller, because I root for the Mariners. Very, very conceivably, Miller can be an average MLB shortstop.  That would be huge for the Mariners.  He is young and cost-controlled, not a free agent until 2020.  He remains a potentially very, very valuable asset to the Mariners.  There is no reason to give up on Miller right now.  But equally, there is no evidence to believe he has fixed his 2014 troubles, yet.

*I appreciate writers who get to the point.