Shelby Miller vacates Forever Giant status, signs with Dodgers

Jason Schmidt. Sergio Romo. Brian Wilson. Juan Uribe. Shelby Miller. The list of former San Francisco Giants who have joined the Los Angeles Dodgers just got a little bit longer.

The MLB offseason has been moving at a snail’s pace as everyone waits for the 6-foot-7 domino to fall. But the Los Angeles Dodgers got the wheels turning a tiny bit on Tuesday with one of the few signings that we’ve seen this offseason. The only problem? The Dodgers signed a former Giant, right-handed reliever Shelby Miller.

How dare he.

All jokes aside, this isn’t exactly a case of the Giants losing something super valuable. Or at least, that’s not how they view it. According to reports, the Giants interest in bringing Miller back was strictly at the Minor League level, and the veteran justifiably jumped at the opportunity to sign a Major League contract.

Miller, an All-Star in 2015, had an interesting year with the Giants. They signed him in June to a Minor League deal, and sent him to the AAA Sacramento River Cats. He did fairly well there, accruing a 3.62 ERA and a 3.82 FIP, with 44 strikeouts to 15 walks in 32.1 innings.

The Giants called him up in late September, and his results were funny. In his first game, he pitched 2.2 scoreless innings, with seven of his eight outs being recorded by strikeout. In his second outing he struck out five of the six batters he faced. His third outing saw him throw a nine-pitch perfect inning, and in his fourth and final outing he faced nine batters and gave up two hits, three walks, and five runs.

As a result, he ended his Giants tenure with a 0.40 FIP and 0.4 fWAR ... and a 6.43 ERA. The Giants apparently don’t think it’s sustainable to strike out two batters every inning, and so now they’ll try hitting against him, instead.