The Cubs made a quiet infield change this week, and it came at Owen Miller’s expense.
With Dansby Swanson on the injured list because of an oblique strain, Chicago had already turned to Miller by selecting his contract earlier in the week. But the look lasted almost no time at all. Miller appeared in just one inning during the Cubs’ three-game series against the White Sox, and that was enough to mark the end of his short stint on the South Side once the Cubs claimed Gabriel Arias off waivers to add depth around the infield.
Arias now gets the roster spot, while Miller heads back out after a very brief stay.
The move connects two players with a shared past. Six years ago, Miller and Arias arrived in Cleveland together in what became Cleveland’s trade fleece of the Padres. Now, the Cubs have chosen Arias over Miller, and the contrast in their current profiles makes the call easy to understand.
Miller’s time with Chicago still counts as a small milestone. His appearance with the Cubs was his first big league action since he played in nine games with the Rockies last spring. Before that, he had established himself in Cleveland, where he debuted in 2021 and then played 130 games in 2022 as the team’s primary utility option.
That season, Miller hit .243/.301/.351 with six home runs and 51 RBI, and he also picked up 11 at-bats in the postseason. After that, Cleveland traded him to the Brewers, and he went on to appear in 104 games for Milwaukee across the 2023 and 2024 seasons. Last year brought his brief run with Colorado, and this season he had been working all year at the Cubs’ Triple-A affiliate, where he posted an .806 OPS with seven home runs and 57 RBI.
Still, Chicago’s preference for Arias over Miller was an easy one. Arias brings more than 1,000 MLB at-bats, a strong throwing arm and some solid exit velocity numbers. Even if Miller had stuck around longer, Arias is the one more likely to see meaningful time, though that role figures to be a utility one behind Nico Hoerner and rookie Pedro Ramírez.
Arias never fully matched the promise he once carried with the Guardians, but he now gets another opportunity with a Cubs team that’s clearly aiming for October.
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Cade Smith collected his 33rd save, but the margin for error was never quite comfortable in the late innings of this one. The Guardians have shown enough lately to suggest the second half still has some life in it, and a clean finish in Colorado would have been an especially useful step, even if the final frame asked a little more of the bullpen than they probably wanted. [Read more 🡒]