Kyle Muller Hoping to Put Himself in Position for 2024

The Oakland A's Opening Day starter is back with the club after a rough season, and wants to put himself on coach's radar to close out the season

Kyle Muller's season started with, as he described it, "The best day I've ever had on a baseball field." From that start on, things haven't been going as well for the A's 6-foot-7 left-hander, acquired as part of the package that sent Sean Murphy to Atlanta.

Friday night marked the first time Muller stepped on a big-league mound in a month and a half after posting a 7.79 ERA through 11 starts with Oakland. This time, he came on in relief, which is his current role. In his time with Triple-A Las Vegas, Muller made 13 starts and posted a 7.26 ERA in the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League. While down there, he has been working on getting his delivery in a consistent point and staying on line.

The lefty has also been working on his changeup to "stabilize against righties." On the season, his splits have been fairly similar against both sides, but he has been walking right-handers 12.1% of the time and lefties just 4.3%. An extra weapon against righties could negate some of those extra baserunners and lead to better results. 

We saw two changeups from Muller on Friday night, both in the seventh inning, and both were called balls. "Just kind of taking it as we go. In certain situations I think I'll be throwing it. In some other situations I'll probably stick to my strengths." The two changeups were both thrown to right-handers in the bottom third of the Baltimore order in situations when there was nobody on base. 

Muller was also touching 97 and averaged 94 with his fastball, up a little over a tick on his season average, and he said that he added some velocity while down in the minors. 

"I had always thrown hard, and that was something that they kind of sent me down the first time to work on getting back. Getting back to long tossing and some weighted balls and just freeing everything up was big. I think just because of all of that and the looseness and building the arm strength to be ticked up, so yeah it's been good."

Muller's line on Friday ended up being 3.1 innings pitched, six hits allowed, two earned runs, one walk, and three strikeouts, but the two runs that he allowed came on a slew of softly hit balls. The hardest among them being a Jordan Westburg 88.8 mph single. The other three hits were between 72 and 79 miles per hour off the bat.

"When a couple balls go down the line and they get runs that way, you'd almost prefer they hit it in the gap. I took it as a win. That's a good offense, and those balls are a couple inches away from going foul, so it is what it is. That's baseball." 

Tyler Soderstrom had the hardest hit ball of the night at 111.6 off the bat on a groundout to second baseman Adam Frazier. That ball was also the fifth-hardest hit in all of MLB on Friday night. 

The A's lost the game on Friday night, 9-4, but the clubhouse before the game was noticeably more lively that it has been throughout the year. Muller said his goal for the rest of the season is "to have as much fun as I possibly can. We're having a tough season. Everybody knows it. Making sure that we can keep it fun, keep it light, and go out there and play hard." 

He also said that he wants to finish this season in a way that makes the coaches look at him for next year and say "that's what we want. That's what we expected."