Wade Miley Plans To Pitch In 2025, Would Prefer To Re-Sign With Brewers

When Wade Miley went under the knife for Tommy John surgery this past April, he wasn’t sure if he’d ever return to a major league mound. He told Adam McCalvy of MLB.com that he’d wait to get through some of his rehab before deciding whether or not to retire, though he added that he’d prefer to go out on his own terms rather than due to an injury, saying “I still feel like I’ve got more in the tank.”

Today, Curt Hogg of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel offered an update on Miley’s rehab and future plans. Long story short, the veteran southpaw is doing everything in his power to get back on the field. Not only does he plan to pitch in 2025, he wants to pitch as soon as possible. It’s been less than eight months since he underwent TJS this past May, but he hopes to be pitching in games by the end of spring training and ready to pitch in the majors as soon as late April/early May. The general recovery timeline for pitchers who undergo TJS is 12 to 18 months, and Miley isn’t your typical patient – he was 37 when he had his surgery and turned 38 in August. Yet, he’s optimistic he can get back to the highest level of competition barely a year after he hit the shelf.

Interestingly, Miley suggests his advanced age could actually help him make a speedy return. While a younger pitcher might prefer to exercise the utmost caution with the future of his career in mind, Miley is only thinking in the short term. His priority isn’t to prolong his pitching career for as long as possible, it’s to get back to action as soon as he can. “I’m not dragging [out] this thing for 14 to 16 months,” he explained. “…If it doesn’t work out, it doesn’t work out. And that’s on me.”

The 2024 season was a lost year for Miley, who threw just seven innings over two outings. The year prior, he made 23 starts for the Brewers. He pitched to a 3.14 ERA, 4.33 xERA, and 5.04 SIERA over 120 1/3 innings between two stints on the IL with back and elbow issues. He put up slightly better numbers with the Cubs the year before that, although more injuries limited him to just 37 innings. His last qualified season came with the Reds in 2021. He tossed 163 frames in 28 starts with a 3.37 ERA, 4.09 xERA, and 4.52 SIERA.

All that to say, Miley can still be a productive pitcher when healthy, even though health has been hard for him to come by. Perhaps that’s enough to earn the veteran a one-year, major league deal. If not, it should make him the ideal candidate for an incentive-based minor league contract. The big question, however, is if he’ll be able to find a club that’s willing to let him attempt such a quick return from TJS. Most teams might prefer that he take a slower and steadier approach to his rehab, both to keep him healthy and to keep him on the 60-day IL until they need him for depth later in the year.

As badly as he wants to pitch in 2025, Miley clarified that he wouldn’t sign just anywhere. For one thing, he isn’t interested in joining a team that would stash him on the IL for the first several months of the season. Furthermore, geography seems to be important to him, likely because he doesn’t want to relocate his family across the country. To that end, he expressed a preference to sign with a Central division team; he’s been in the NL Central since he signed with the Reds ahead of the 2020 campaign. In particular, Miley heavily implied that the Brewers remain his team of choice. “I would sign back in the Central, preferably wearing blue,” he said. “Dark blue.”

Hogg notes that the interest is mutual, and the Brewers have spoken with Miley this winter about a new contract. While the two sides haven’t made much progress yet, that doesn’t mean a deal won’t come together. Miley’s representatives are trying to find him a guaranteed big league deal, while the Brewers are not yet willing to offer anything more than a minor league contract. Ultimately, however, Miley told Hogg that he’d be happy to sign a non-guaranteed contract with financial incentives. He’s not doing his agents any favors by saying that out loud, but it seems like Miley isn’t too concerned about the money.

As for the Brewers, they rarely spend significant money on free agent pitchers. Combine that fact with Miley’s injury history, and it’s not hard to see why they’d be hesitant to offer him a big league deal. What’s more, Milwaukee already has a full rotation including Freddy Peralta, Brandon Woodruff, Nestor Cortes, Tobias Myers, and Aaron Civale, as well as DL Hall and Aaron Ashby. However, this team knows better than anyone that there’s no such thing as too much starting pitching depth – their rotation was plagued by injuries throughout the 2024 season – and they clearly like what Miley brings to the table. They’ve already acquired him three times before, and for what it’s worth, they won their division in all three years (2018, ’23, ’24). Thus, it’s not hard to picture these two sides coming together on a new deal for 2025.

With all that said, it’s still no guarantee Miley is pitching for the Brewers, or anyone, in 2025. He implied to Hogg that he’d rather retire than sign with a team that isn’t the right fit. He also made it clear that he doesn’t want to pitch in the majors if he isn’t going to be productive. “I don’t want to be a burden on anyone and make three starts and be done,” he said.

To that point, Miley mentions that bone spurs in the back of his elbow have been a problem so far in his rehab. If the bone spurs continue to cause trouble and prevent him from pitching this spring, it’s certainly possible he’ll decide to hang up his hat. After all, he told Hogg that he’s already accomplished everything “he ever dreamed of” in Major League Baseball over the course of his 14-year career.