strikeouts

The regional aspect of modern Major League Baseball makes it easy to miss out on stories or players from across the country. The San Diego Padres might be one of the best examples of that, considering most of their games start after 9pm Eastern and finish well after midnight.So it's forgivable if some baseball fans have not followed Padres closer Mason Miller this season. But boy oh boy, should baseball fans be following Mason Miller. Because what he's doing to opposing hitters this season, along with his performance for much of last season, is virtually unprecedented and may never be accomplished again. RELATED: Here's What The San Diego Padres Record $3.9 Billion Sale Means For Major League BaseballWednesday night, Miller entered in the ninth inning with the Padres up 5-2 on the Seattle Mariners. He struck out the side, getting J.P Crawford, Mitch Garver, and Cole Young looking. Nothing too unusual about that, right? But what is unusual is that Wednesday's dominant performance added to what's become an unimaginable run from Miller. To the point where the stats he's putting up would be unrealistic in a video game.Wednesday's outing meant that Miller had officially passed nine innings pitched this season. And in those 9.1 innings, he's allowed one hit. Not one hit per inning, one total hit. He's also allowed one walk, meaning that out of 30 total batters faced, two have reached base. His batting average allowed this season is .034. He's making professional hitters look worse than when pitchers hit. But that's just one side of it. The other remarkable side is that of the 30 hitters he's faced, he's struck out 23 of them. Nearly 77% of hitters who've come to the plate against him have struck out. Last season, the MLB leader in strikeout percentage among qualified pitchers was Tarik Skubal at 32.2%.  Put differently, Miller's 23 K's in 9.1 innings correlates to just over 22 strikeouts per nine innings. For reference, the Major League record for strikeouts in a nine-inning game is 20. That's only been achieved four times in baseball history.Obviously, Miller is a reliever, not a starter, and it's easier to put up these kinds of numbers in sporadic outings compared to one game where hitters have multiple opportunities to face the same pitcher. Still, the scale of what he's doing is mind-boggling. And it's not just this season.Since June 20, 2025, Miller has allowed two runs. Total. Over 43.1 regular season innings, he's allowed two runs. He's struck out 81 hitters over that same time frame and allowed 10 hits. 149 total batters faced, 10 hits allowed. That's a .075 batting average, to go along with an .098 slugging percentage. Again, he's making big league hitters look worse than pitchers. Here's another way to think about this. Baseball-Reference has a statistic called ERA+, where 100 would be effectively league average. Last year, Paul Skenes had a 219 ERA+ on his way to winning the NL Cy Young Award. In his time in San Diego, Miller's ERA+ is 780. Then there's this, per OptaSTATS. Miller has struck out, including the playoffs:"No other MLB pitcher in the last 50 years has matched any of those stretches at any point in his career. Regular or postseason."So how is this possible, you might be wondering. Rob Friedman, aka Pitching Ninja on X, put together an overlay video of Miller's 103+mph fastball and slider that explains why hitters have so much trouble.They have to sit fastball, because otherwise it's nearly impossible to catch up to 103-104mph. But his slider looks nearly identical halfway to the plate, meaning hitters are either way too late for his fastball, or way too early on his slider. When he's throwing strikes, as he has been all season, they can't sit back and wait for a 3-0 fastball down the middle either. Even when they guess right, the quality of his fastball and slider as individual pitches makes him exceptionally hard to it. This bears out when looking at contact rates. Thus far in 2026, hitters are making contact just 51.6% of the time when they swing at pitches inside the strike zone. In 2025, when hitters swung at pitches in the strike zone from Tarik Skubal, they made contact 77.3% of the time. When hitters chase against Miller, the contact rate drops to just 25.8%. Last year, Skubal's contact rate allowed on pitches off the plate was 50.1%. His stuff is so good that he can throw it for strikes and still get swings and misses. When hitters swing at balls, they have little-to-no chance of even making contact, let alone high-quality contact. You can't wait him out and hope he walks you, because he's walked one out of 30 hitters this season. And his fastball and slider look the same, despite a 15-18mph speed differential. What we're seeing is a level of dominance that's almost impossible to comprehend. It's only 9.1 innings, so it's possible that these stats regress a bit as the season wears on. But at this point, Miller has essentially broken the modern day hitter. And made the Padres virtually unbeatable with a lead in the ninth inning.