Three from New Braunfels on the rise in the American League

Notable: Former New Braunfels High School and Texas A&M pitcher Bryce Miller is scheduled to start tonight in Arlington for the Seattle Mariners against the World Series champion Texas Rangers.

Miller is off to a fast start in his second season in the major leagues.

The 6-foot-2 righthander has been nearly untouchable in April. This month, he’s 3-0 in three starts, winning on the road at Milwaukee and at home against the Chicago Cubs and the Cincinnati Reds. In his three April outings, Miller has yielded only one earned run in 19 and 1/3 innings.

Elsewhere:

Two former University of Texas players, Kody Clemens and Bryce Elder, took full advantage of promotions to the major leagues recently.

Clemens belted a three-run homer for the Philadelphia Phillies on Monday night in his first MLB game of the season. He was called up from Triple A in the wake of Phillies’ star Bryce Harper’s absence on paternity leave. Clemens, 27, started fast this spring, hitting .270 with three home runs and 11 RBI at Lehigh Valley.

Elder started and pitched the Atlanta Braves to a 3-0 victory against Miami. He yielded eight hits in 6 and 2/3 scoreless innings his first MLB start this season. The right-hander struck out four and walked none. Elder pitched in 41 games for the Braves over the past two seasons but didn’t make the squad out of spring training. Last season, he was 12-4.

Getting another chance, he made a statement about his professionalism.

“It says a lot about him,” Braves manager Brian Snitker said in an Associated Press story. “The dedication, the focus — everything. When we sent him down, he said, ‘I’ll be ready when you need me.’ And he was. He had really good command of all of his pitches. We’ve seen him do that before.”

September to remember: James McArthur finds his groove with the Kansas City Royals

By Jerry Briggs
Special to The JB Replay

The professional baseball career of former New Braunfels High School pitcher James McArthur has taken a few unexpected twists and turns over the past four months. He has been traded and he has been hit hard. He’s bounced back and forth from the minor leagues to the majors.

Adversity? Coming off elbow troubles last year, McArthur has seen his share of it, for sure. But that was then, and this is now. And right now, he apparently has packed away all his troubles, setting the stage for a strong finish as a Kansas City Royals rookie.

Four months after a trade sent him from the Phillies to the Royals, McArthur clearly has found a groove. He hasn’t allowed an earned run — or even a run, period — in seven appearances out of the Royals’ bullpen this month.

After adding a slider to his repertoire, the 6-foot-7 righthander has thrown one-hit ball over 9 and 2/3 scoreless innings in September.

In his last two appearances, both at home, he earned his first major league win against the Houston Astros last Friday night, followed by his first save against the Cleveland Indians on Monday.

As the Royals beat the Indians 6-4 at Kauffman Stadium, McArthur finished the game — three up three, three down — to earn mention Tuesday morning on the MLB network highlights.

All told, he threw only 17 pitches in retiring Bo Naylor, Myles Straw and Steven Kwan, lowering his WHIP to a microscopic 0.10 for the month. Highlighting the outing, McArthur unleashed a nasty slider to strike out Straw swinging.

Not too bad for a guy who was battling an elbow problem as a Phillies minor leaguer last summer. Eventually, he moved past the sore arm, but the defending National League champions had other plans for him.

In May, the Phillies dealt McArthur for outfielder Junior Morin and cash. The former 12th-round draft pick by the Phillies went to the Royals, who assigned him to Triple-A Omaha.

By the end of June, he got the call to the majors. But in keeping with the crazy summer, his callup was hardly the stuff of Hollywood. Once in the big leagues, he got bombed in his Royals debut on June 28 against the Indians, giving up seven runs in one inning. Two days later, he was sent back to the minors.

Through August, he moved up and came back down to the minors a few more times. On Sept. 1, though, the Royals recalled him again. He’s been stringing zeroes on the scoreboard ever since.

Notable

McArthur is the third former New Braunfels High School ball player to reach the major leagues this season. Earlier, Bryce Miller made the Seattle Mariners and Jordan Westburg was called up to the Baltimore Orioles. All three athletes played collegiately in the Southeastern Conference, Miller at Texas A&M, Westburg at Mississippi State and McArthur at Ole Miss.

Mariners manager on Bryce Miller: ‘Calm, cool as any young player I’ve ever seen’

By Jerry Briggs
Special for The JB Replay

Bryce Miller’s performance for the Seattle Mariners late Tuesday night at the Oakland Coliseum reverberated all the way back to his Texas home, where he made at least one evening television sportscast in San Antonio on Wednesday night and generated stories on more than a few local websites.

In his major league debut, the 24-year-old New Braunfels High School alumnus took a perfect game against the A’s into the sixth inning. He finished with only one run allowed on two hits in six innings. Perhaps more eye opening, the 24-year-old righthander struck out 10 and walked none.

Yes, he did it against the A’s, the team with the worst record in baseball. But his stuff was so good, it raised eyebrows in the Mariners organization, with manager Scott Servais calling it “an unbelievable performance” in postgame comments aired on Roots Sports.

“Calm, cool as any young player I’ve ever seen, for any young player getting to start his first major league game,” Servais said. “That’s kind of what we saw in spring training. But you never really know when the lights come on, and it was the same guy.

“He got in an awesome rhythm, a groove, with his secondary pitches. Obviously, the fastball’s got all kinds of life on it, and the swing and miss that that can bring from other lineups. You can’t ask for much more. That was some kind of shot in the arm.”

When the game started, it was sort of a curiosity, with A’s rookie Mason Miller going against a kid from Texas named Bryce Miller (no relation). When it reached the sixth inning, both pitchers were still in the game and both had no hitters going.

In the bottom of the sixth, with Bryce on the mound, the A’s came to life with Tony Kemp delivering a one-out single. Eventually, former San Antonio Missions star Esteury Ruiz doubled to drive in Kemp with the game’s first run.

By the top of the seventh, the A’s had a 1-0 lead, with Mason Miller still on the mound, throwing well and retiring the Mariners 1-2-3. For the A’s rookie, that was it. He was done, and the game would be turned over to the A’s bullpen. The Mariners took advantage of the situation, scored twice late and won the game, 2-1.

In the aftermath, historians and data specialists determined that Miller had become the only pitcher in Mariners history to strike out 10 batters in his debut. He joined Stephen Strasburg and Johnny Cueto as the only pitchers in AL/NL history to post 10 plus strikeouts and no walks in his first game.

Bryce Miller was still beaming about it all in his first Mariners’ post-game news conference. “I’ve been dreaming about it since I was little,” he said in remarks published by mlb.com. “I’ll definitely take the results from today.”

Earlier in the afternoon on Tuesday, New Braunfels coach Robert Alford talked about the pride he feels in what his former player has accomplished in simply reaching the big leagues. Alford coached him for three years on varsity through 2017 on a team that also included Baltimore Orioles’ prospect Jordan Westburg.

“It’s just a really, really cool deal,” Alford said of Miller’s promotion to the majors.

Alford said Miller had “a ton of upside” coming out of New Braunfels and elected to play one year in 2018 at Blinn Junior College. From there, he signed with Texas A&M of the Southeastern Conference and continued to progress.

At A&M, he faced a serious challenge when his second season with the Aggies in March of 2020 was cut short by the coronavirus pandemic. Undeterred, Miller didn’t flinch. By June, he joined the Brazos Valley Bombers in the Texas Collegiate League and continued to work on his craft.

Alford applauded Miller and all the ball players around the state who pursued their goals during a time of uncertainty.

“Like you said, it was just a lot of people trying to chase their dream,” Alford said. “There was so much fear of the unknown and what was happening with Covid … but (there was a sense that) ‘I still need to get out there and do what I’m supposed to do.’

“I saw it all across the summer, because I’ve got two boys myself, and we were driving all over Texas and watching them play. You see all those kids out there, just trying to have some sense of normalcy. It was pretty impressive.”

Missions president Burl Yarbrough ran the Flying Chanclas de San Antonio in the TCL out of Wolff Stadium in both 2020 and 2021. In 2020, the TCL was the only baseball show in town after the minor league season was canceled.

Three years ago, Miller and the Bombers were the opposition to Yarbrough and the Chanclas. But upon learning Tuesday morning that Miller had made the major leagues, he acknowledged that it “was really cool” to have someone from the 2020 TCL break through to the highest level of baseball.

Recalling what it was like to meet specific health and safety protocols on a nightly basis that summer, Yarbrough reflected on what it all meant to him.

“None of us had ever been through anything like that,” he said. “You take those kids that had their season taken away from them at the college level, and we had lost our (entire) season at Triple-A that summer. We were just looking for something to put together and have an opportunity for kids to play. It’s something that I’m very proud of, that we were able to get all that done.

“Because, man, it would have been a long, long year without baseball.”

Bryce Miller from New Braunfels and Texas A&M started on the mound for the Brazos Valley Bombers and pitched three scoreless innings against the Flying Chanclas on Tuesday at Wolff Stadium. - photo by Joe Alexander

Three years ago, former New Braunfels High School standout Bryce Miller pitched for the Brazos Valley Bombers in the Texas Collegiate League. Today, he is coming off a historic first start in the big leagues with the Seattle Mariners . – File photo by Joe Alexander

New Braunfels’ Bryce Miller expected to make his major league debut tonight

Bryce Miller from New Braunfels and Texas A&M started on the mound for the Brazos Valley Bombers and pitched three scoreless innings against the Flying Chanclas on Tuesday at Wolff Stadium. - photo by Joe Alexander

Bryce Miller, from New Braunfels and Texas A&M, pitched for the Brazos Valley Bombers in the Texas Collegiate League during the summer of 2020 – File photo by Joe Alexander

By Jerry Briggs
Special for The JB Replay

Bryce Miller, who survived the pandemic summer of 2020 pitching in front of sparse crowds with the Brazos Valley Bombers, is expected to make his major league debut tonight.

The Seattle Mariners’ No. 2 prospect is being recalled from Double-A Arkansas and will start in Tuesday’s series opener against the Oakland A’s, according to a story by Daniel Kramer published Monday on mlb.com.

It’s a story that I’m following closely, because it’s such a testament to the resilience of youth.

Here’s what I know about Miller and his journey to The Show:

The righthander pitched for New Braunfels High School, for Blinn College and for parts of three seasons at Texas A&M before he was drafted by the Mariners in 2021 on the fourth round.

During his time at A&M, the careers of young ball players everywhere were threatened by the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, and Miller was no different.

College seasons in the spring of 2020 ended in March when the impact of the national health crisis started to be felt. Eventually, most sporting events around the nation went on pause.

Even though the major leagues would eventually play a shortened season in 2020, minor league pro baseball scrapped its season entirely, giving rise to independent leagues willing to continue to operate.

Locally, Miller joined some of the other top players in the developmental phase of their careers gravitating to the Texas Collegiate League.

The Flying Chanclas de San Antonio, run by the administration of the San Antonio Missions, played in the TCL out of Wolff Stadium.

It was at Wolff in July of 2020 when my friend and colleague Joe Alexander took some pictures of Miller, a 2017 New Braunfels graduate, pitching for the Bombers.

I’ll always remember that summer as one of great uncertainty.

Fearful of being around anyone outside of my immediate family, I didn’t attend the TCL games at Wolff, but I did watch games from my home on a livestream, talked periodically on the phone with Flying Chanclas manager John McLaren and wrote stories for The JB Replay from my kitchen table.

That’s why I’ll be really happy to see what happens when Miller takes the ball for the Mariners tonight in the Oakland Coliseum.

Three years ago, the lanky righty likely had some thoughts of uncertainty himself, especially when his college season at Texas A&M was shuttered.

He probably wondered where it was all going as he joined the Brazos Valley club, rode the bus and played in front of sparse crowds in the stifling heat of Texas, all to keep his dream alive.

Tonight, I’ll be on campus at UTSA watching the Roadrunners play the Sam Houston State Bearkats. But I’ll keep an eye on the proceedings in Oakland, eager to see how Miller fares in his first start in the majors.

One of the boys of the pandemic summer has made it to the big leagues, and knowing where we all were three years ago, that’s a reason for everyone to toast the occasion.