SEATTLE – A disappointing regular season turned into an encouraging October finish for Bryce Miller, who posted three strong playoff starts in the Mariners’ march to the American League Championship Series.
Better yet for Miller and the Mariners: The 27-year-old right-hander says he doesn’t expect he will need surgery to repair an elbow injury that kept him out for half of the 2025 season.
“The season didn’t go, personally, anywhere near how I wanted it to,” Miller said. “But I finished the year the best I felt all year – three good starts, I felt like. My body and my arm feel good, so just get better, get fully healthy and be ready to go from Day 1 next year.”
The Mariners expect the same to be true for Bryan Woo, George Kirby and Logan Gilbert, three rotation mainstays who dealt with various injuries during the season.
Kirby (shoulder inflammation) and Gilbert (right elbow flexor strain) each missed about two months in the first half, landing on the injured list for the first time in their careers.
“Logan hadn’t been a concern for quite some time,” Mariners president of baseball operations Jerry Dipoto said. “Similar with George. They’re both in a pretty good spot (going into the offseason).”
Woo, a first-time All-Star, emerged as the staff ace at a crucial time when the M’s navigated the absences of Kirby, Gilbert and Miller.
Just as the rotation was returning to full strength in September, Woo then suffered an injury to his right pectoral muscle during his Sept. 19 start in Houston. He would miss nearly a month before returning in a relief role for two games late in the ALCS vs. Toronto.
“I’m glad, obviously, I was able to come back,” Woo said after the Game 7 loss in Toronto. “Wish I was able to play a bigger role and help the team more than I did. But sports, it’s not always a happy ending. You do what you can to make a positive impact in any way you can. But it is what it is. You’ve got to live with it.”
Dipoto intimated that Woo should have a normal offseason routine.
“Obviously, it was a tough one, getting through season’s end, the LDS (vs. Detroit) and into the LCS and not having volume (from Woo),” Dipoto said. “But as you saw at the end, he was back to full strength.”
Miller said he has a follow-up appointment with renown elbow specialist Dr. Keith Meister planned for early this offseason in Texas to determine next-steps treatment of a small bone spur in his right elbow.
In early June, Meister administered a platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injection in Miller’s elbow. He was shut down from throwing for two weeks, and then began a gradual build up in arm strength.
He returned to the Mariners rotation on Aug. 19 and made eight starts over the final eight weeks of the regular season.
In late September, Miller had more medical imagining taken of his elbow, which showed improved healing in the area.
Miller said recently he would be “surprised” if Meister recommended any sort of invasive procedure this offseason.
More likely, Miller said, he would get another gel cortisone injection (which is different from a PRP injection) in his elbow early this offseason, and perhaps another one at the start of spring training next season.
It’s not uncommon, Dipoto said, for pitchers to continue to pitch with a bone spur in their elbow.
“Now that we know how to deal with the bone spur, we can figure out what we need to do exactly with it and go from there,” Miller said.
The Mariners’ breakout pitcher of 2024, Miller slogged through the first two months of the 2025 regular season, eventually revealing the discovery of the bone spur.
Miller ranked among the American League leaders in 2024 with a 2.94 ERA and 1801/3 innings over 31 starts.
In 2025, his ERA nearly doubled (5.68) and his innings (90.1) were cut in half.
But Miller bounced back with three promising starts in the playoffs – one in Detroit, one in Toronto and one vs. the Blue Jays in Seattle – posting a 1.88 ERA (three earned runs in 141/3 innings). His resurgence was one of the bright spots of the deepest October run in franchise story.
“It felt really good,” Miller said. “Just to end on a positive note, personally, is good after how up and down the year was for me.”