With all due respect to 36-year-old Dodgers future first ballot Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw, there might be a new Staff Ace on the radar of the Dodgers insanely good pitching staff, and his name is Bobby Miller.

A bold statement after making only one start in the Dodgers four-game-old 2024 season, and after only 6.0 innings pitched? Absolutely. But it’s what he did in those 6.0 innings – and the 13.0 innings he pitched in his four 2024 Spring Training starts – that puts a little muscle behind that ridiculously bold statement.

In his season debut against the St. Louis Cardinals at a sold-out Dodger Stadium on Friday night, the very hard throwing 24-year-old Elk Grove Village, IL native and Dodgers first round draft pick in 2020 out of the University of Louisville did not allow a run in those 6.0 inning, while striking out 11 of the 21 Cardinals batters he faced and walking only one, doing so on 93 total pitched of which 62 were strikes.

But wait, there’s more!

Miller also retired the first 11 Cardinal batters he faced, including striking out the side in the top of the first inning on 15 pitches. He also struck out 10 of the first 17 Cardinals he faced and threw first-pitch strikes to all but six of the 21 batters he faced, earning his first win of the young season in the Dodgers 6-3 win over the Redbirds.

“That was awesome,” Miller said of the standing ovation he received after striking out Gorman. “I haven’t felt anything like that before. That definitely gives me a lot of confidence out there, to hear the fans like that, the roar like that, and it gave me a lot of confidence.

“I was pretty fired up after because the previous few betters my command was starting to get a little worse, a couple of three ball counts, so that felt really good,” Miller added of his well-deserved display of emotions.

Getting back to that ‘new ace’ thing, in his four Spring Training starts, Miller struck out nine of the 56 batters he faced over his combined 13 innings pitched, while walking only three. He allowed only four earned runs on 14 hits and finished his Spring with a 1-1 record and a 2.77 ERA.

As for Kershaw, he underwent off-season surgery to his left shoulder to repair the glenohumeral ligaments and capsule, and hasn’t made a competitive pitch since Game-1 of the 2023 NLDS back on October 7. That said, the extremely popular three-time Cy Young Award winner, 10-time All-Star, five-time ERA title winner, 2020 World Series Champion, former MLB Player of the Year, and Gold Glove-winning former MLB MVP recently began a throwing program and has made it abundantly clear that he plans to return to action this season.

In other words, and despite his early success, 24-year-old Bobby Miller has a very long way to go to dethrone 36-year-old Clayton Kershaw as the Staff Ace.

…but you gotta love his start towards that end.

Play Ball!

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