Stu Miller             Elected 1995, Veterans Committee

Starting Pitcher
Washington Monuments
1952-1962

Stu Miller was the league's first dominant starter and the founding father of the league's first dynasty, the Jay Kaplan-led Washington Monuments. Miller's career arc paralleled that of his teammate and co-Veterans Committee inductee Carl Erskine. Both won three ERA titles, one Cy Young Award, and were named to the 1951-60 All-Decade Team. And both suffered injuries—one career-ending and the other career-altering—that diminished their counting stats and kept them out of the Hall of Fame for three decades.

Born in Northampton, Mass.—the home of Smith College and the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art—Miller was the fifth overall pick in the league's first rookie draft in 1952, behind future Cleveland Barons Hall of Famers Eddie Mathews and Harvey Kuenn, another fellow VetCommie. Like Carle's famous Very Hungry Caterpillar, Miller ate his way through UL lineups over an 11-year career. He was the league's best pitcher in 1952-54, leading Washington to three consecutive league titles—with three of the best pitching seasons in UL history.

Rookie of the Year
The 79-75 and fourth-place Monuments were already the top pitching team the league's inaugural season, with Dave Koslo, Steve Gromek, and Larry Jansen cracking the top five in ERA, backed by Frank Smith's 32 saves. But that 1951 season was just a taste of things to come.

Thrust into the Mons rotation from Day 1 in 1952, the 24-year-old Miller was bonerific in his first five gigs, going 0-4 with a 7.11 ERA. It appeared GM Jay Kaplan's decision to rush Miller into the limelight might have been a mistake. But on May 9 Stu three-hit the Boston Beacons and then tossed 37 consecutive shutouts innings—including a no-hit bid May 21 that was spoiled with two outs in the ninth by a two-run homer by the aforementioned Harvey Kuenn.  Miller's hot streak fueled Washington to a 23-4 May as they vaulted from worst to first, and was the seminal moment for what would become a Monuments dynasty. In early August, they went on a 13-1 tear to expand their lead to 12.5 games over Detroit. As Boston GM Charlie Qualls noted, "Jay Kaplan has taken the UL’s youngest team and brought everything together in only their second year of coexistence." September injuries to 1-2 starters Steve Gromek and Larry Jansen were nary a speed bump in Washington's drive to the pennant, which they won by 12 games over St. Louis.

Miller finished 16-13 in 37 starts, including 20 complete games, and logged 306 innings pitched. He was named Rookie of the Year, but missed out on the All-UL Team to teammates Gromek and Jansen, who took the Cy Young Award. That trio, along with 1954 addition Erskine, would turn into one of the most dominant pitching staffs in UL history.

Cy Young and All-UL Years
In his sophomore season, Miller emerged as the dominant ace, surpassing his All-UL teammates Gromek and Jansen to capture the Cy Young Award. Washington began its title defense with a 14-0 start and a 14-2 run in early June put them 14 games ahead with a 49-17 record. Miller was 15-1 in his first 17 starts and Washington (97-57) led pole-to-pole, outpacing St. Louis by 15 games.

Miller trimmed his ERA to 2.24 (the league ERA was 4.43, the fourth highest in the league's first 45 years), with a miniscule 6.0 hits per nine and 1.02 WHIP. His 28 wins is still the second most in league history.

In 1954, the Monuments were again fast out of the gate, going 13-2 before a seven-game slump in late April caused some to question their infallibility. But by mid-May, the champs were back in first, with young Willie Mays' bat coming to life and Stu Miller maintaining a sub-2.00 ERA deep into June. Miller was  slightly worse (24-8, 2.39) and lost the Cy Young to St. Louis ace Billy Pierce, but still led the league in ERA, innings, and H/9.

Washington welcomed a rookie starter into the fold, the 6th-rated prospect Carl Erskine. Oisk had a rough rookie campaign, but would quickly overtake Miller as the staff ace on the league's premier pitching team, just as Miller had in 1952.

Fourpeat Denied
Washington's four-peat bid in 1955 took a big hit when Miller suffered a ruptured disk on June 30. That injury-shortened season kept his win total to single digits and the 27-year-old was never the same after rehabbing. From 1956 on, his ERA was consistently over 3.00, though he won 20 games in 1957 and never allowed more than 8.7 hits per game until his age-33 season in1961.

Miller/Gromek/Jansen
Let's take a step back to assess just how good the Monuments pitching was. First off, the All-UL Team in those days had room for four pitchers: three starters and a reliever. From 1952-54, the Monuments owned nine of a possible 12 spots, including all four in 1953. No other team in league history has had more than five All-UL pitchers in a three-year span—and this was before Erskine's dominance began in 1955. In 1952, four Washington pitchers (Dave Koslo was #4) finished in the top five in ERA. In 1953, Miller, Gromek, and Jansen were 1-2-3 in ERA. In UL history, only one other team has finished 1-2 in ERA two years in a row (1993-94 Atlanta) and only one other team (1963 Brooklyn) has ever finished 1-2-3 in ERA.  Miller, Gromek, and Jansen were a combined 199-84 with a 2.86 ERA those three years. In 331 starts, they completed 151 games with 36 shutouts, for an aggregate 69.1 WAR, prompting Circuit Clouts to comment, "The 'Big Three' Monuments in the nation's capital used to be Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln. Now they are Miller, Jansen, and Gromek."

The '52 and '53 teams were particularly dominant. In 1952, Washington allowed 3.8 runs  per game, 1.1 fewer than the next best team. In '53 the numbers were 3.7 and 0.9. In both years, they allowed 1.3 fewer runs per game than the league average, a feat surpassed by only one other team in UL history (1963 Brooklyn).

Superpower
One could make the case that  the two most important stats for a pitcher are ERA and IP. A pitcher's job is to prevent runs from being scored and to do it as much as possible. Quality and quantity. Bill James has a stat for that. He calls it pitching runs. The formula is the difference between a pitcher's ERA and the league average multiplied by innings pitched. Pitching Runs tells you how many runs a pitcher has kept off the scoreboard relative to a league average pitcher.

Miller is the only pitcher to have three 60-PR seasons. There have been only six 70+ Pitcher Run seasons, and Stu Miller had two of them in 1953 and 1954. In his Cy Young year, he tallied a stratospheric 77.2 Pitcher Runs (surpassed only by Gene Conley in 1959).

But forget advanced metrics, let's go back to traditional statistics. The same pitcher has led the league in both ERA and innings pitched just nine times, and Miller did it three years in a row—in his first three seasons! [Others on this list include Erskine (1960), Fergie Jenkins (1975), Larry Dierker (1976, 1980), Dwight Gooden (1984, 1986). Gooden was the only other rookie to pull it off].

Never a strikeout leader, Miller's superpower was preventing hits. From 1952-54 he led the league in Hits Per Nine, averaging 6.1 across that three-year span (again, in three of the five most offensive seasons in league history). His 7.6 career H/9 was third best in the era, behind Gene Conley and Whitey Ford.

Miller won four titles with the Monuments (1952-54 and '56), and was named to the league's first All-Decade Team in 1961, along with teammate Carl Erskine. What's more, he captured a Gold Glove in his final season (1962), making him one of just six
pitchers to win both a Cy Young and a Gold Glove (Sam Zoldak, Carl Erskine, Ed Figueroa, Dwight Gooden, and Rick Reuschel).

So What Happened?
Stu Miller retired after the 1962 season with a career 172-140 record, 3.42 ERA, 7.6 H/9, and 51.6 WAR. Hall of Fame balloting started in 1965, and Miller was second among pitchers on the inaugural ballot, though a distant seventh overall. Like Erskine, Miller failed to rise to the top during the five-year "one candidate a year" phase, and he was voted off the island in 1969.

Not that it would have mattered. Starting in 1969, one pitching legend per year was enshrined into Beachville (Antonelli, Ford, Conley, Burdette) and Stu Miller's early '50s dominance was quickly forgotten.

Veterans Committee to the Rescue
Taking a  fresh look at Miller's resume three decades after he last threw a pitch, the Veterans Committee finally gave Stu Miller the recognition he deserves for several years of utter dominance and his central role in the creation of the league's first dynasty. Along with the election of Carl Erskine, the 1950s Washington Monuments dynasty finally has due representation in the Hall.

Despite four league titles and seven straight 90-win seasons, Washington had just two guys in the Hall from that era, compared to Brooklyn's six (Ford, Conley, Hamner, Burdette, Mantle, and McAuliffe). What's more, for a pitching-dominant dynasty, Willie Mays and Joe Adcock were the Mons' only representatives, and Adcock went in as a Chicago Colt. With Miller and Erskine's induction, that wrong has been righted. (TJS)