A sizable shortstop, Phillies prospect Aidan Miller shows the work ethic of a ’throwback’

He’s a first-round pick who works like a last-round pick. A tweak to his batting stance is paying off already.

Aidan Miller at bat during a Phillies spring training game against the Pirates in Clearwater, Fla., on March 18.Read moreYong Kim / Staff Photographer

Published April 25, 2024, 5:00 a.m. ET

CINCINNATI — Last summer, shortly after the Phillies drafted prospect Aidan Miller in the first round, he met minor league infield coordinator Adam Everett at the minor league complex in Clearwater, Fla. Everett asked him where he wanted to play. Miller didn’t hesitate.

“Shortstop,” he said.

“Good,” Everett replied. “Because I think you can do it.”

It was a freeing moment for Miller. For years, evaluators had said that he was too big to play the position; that he’d be better suited for third base. But he didn’t want to play third base, even at 6-foot-1 and 205 pounds. He wanted to play short.

So, they got to work. Miller told Everett that he wanted to be a “defensive specialist,” and he wasn’t really joking. Miller is a prospect for his hitting ability and his power, but he also wants to be the best shortstop he can be. It is why he has spent the offseason working with Everett, and why he spent spring training on the big league side, watching Trea Turner take ground balls.

“There have always been excuses about why I shouldn’t be a shortstop,” said Miller, a native of Dunedin, Fla. “I’ve heard it all my life. But I believe I can, and so do the Phillies. I’m 100% motivated by that.”

Miller, 19, is in the midst of his first full minor league season with single-A Clearwater. Everett likes to say that he’s a “throwback.” He’s a first-round pick who works like a last-round pick. The game comes naturally to him, but he doesn’t expect any preferential treatment.

It’s that combination of makeup and raw ability that has the Phillies so high on Miller. The power is obviously there — he is hitting .318/.367/.545 with a .912 OPS and two home runs through 10 games with Clearwater — but so is his drive.

This stage of a young player’s development is usually about getting at-bats, but Miller has asked his coaches for more. Last year, when Clearwater played against the Palm Beach Cardinals, he got his first taste of a 98-100 mph fastball. It was a far cry from the 89 mph he’d faced in high school.

“Well, this is different,” he thought to himself.

A few months later, in October, Miller approached Luke Murton, the Phillies’ director of hitting development.

“He really didn’t want to mess with me too much, just because I hadn’t played too many games,” Miller said. “But I went up to him one day and I was like, ‘I just want to be more consistent on the fastball.’ And we just started working and finding different ways to do it.

“A lot of things we did didn’t work, and I hated it, or he didn’t like it. It was a long process, but we ultimately found the perfect thing that we both liked, and we just stuck with it. He’s been a great help to me.”

They settled on an adjustment to his setup. Murton showed him videos of power hitters like Byron Buxton, Bryce Harper and Turner pre-setting their hips toward the catcher. Miller took to it immediately.

“Before I was super open, and then I would load and then come close, and it was just way too much movement,” Miller said. “I was getting beat every single time with the fastball. By presetting my hips, I think it just got me more in a ready position to hit.”

He feels that it has helped him unlock something offensively. He’s been taking better swings. Those 98 mph fastballs aren’t blowing by him anymore. He feels more comfortable in the box, and he’s done it without changing anything to his swing.

Sometimes, Miller will see videos of himself hitting on X, formerly Twitter — he said he often sees them posted by WIP-FM host Jack Fritz — and fans will ask him what he has figured out.

“People will say he looks like a completely different hitter,” Miller said. “Where’d his swing go, his load go, his hitch? And I really didn’t change any of that. It was just presetting my hips, and then everything else went the way it was naturally supposed to.

“Nothing that I did was forced. It was all pretty much natural.”

It’s those types of processes that Miller is trying to figure out. Pregame routines, how to set up, how he should work, things like that. Both he and the Phillies know that he is a ways away from the big leagues, but Miller has done a good job of balancing the now, while keeping an eye on the future. It’s why he likes to watch the Phillies as much he can.

“That’s the future, that’s where we’re going to be,” he said. “And they were in our shoes at one point, too. Getting to know some of the guys during spring training, they’re really all just like us, they’re really just kids who enjoy playing the game.”

He added: “We’re lucky that the Phillies are so good. I learn a lot by watching them.”