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BP Annual Player Comments

Year		Comment
2010		Along with Jeff Weaver and Shawn Estes, Milton appeared to be part of the Dodgers' spring training "Turn Back the Clock" initiative. Working his way back from 2007 Tommy John surgery, he survived a month-long stint at Albuquerque—normally hell on an extreme flyballer—and fared well as a fifth starter before back woes set in, ultimately forcing him into season-ending surgery to remove a herniated disc. Milton has just 55 big-league innings since 2006, so it's an open question as to whether he can hold his body together long enough to get another opportunity.
2008		If Majewski/Kearns was the signature trade of the 21st century Reds, here's the signature signing. Former GM Dan O'Brien gets blamed for putting Milton in a Cincy uniform, but COO John Allen was actually the culprit. The Reds had money to spend after the 2004 season, and by golly, they were going to spend it. They'd have been better off pocketing the cash, burning it, or spending it on the next Jay Bruce. Heck, the next Bruce Vilanch would have been a better investment than Milton (and no, he didn't write that quip). Elbow surgery last June brought an early end to Milton's time with the Reds. Any future applicants for his services should have distant outfield fences and some patience for rehab.
2007		Not every former Twin came in after Krivsky--some of them got big money beforehand. Although it doesn`t look all that hot, compared to the disaster of his first season with the Reds, Milton`s 2006 campaign provided the team with some good work. Milton lost time to a knee injury early on and injured his elbow in his next-to-last start, but by that point he`d made 16 quality starts (through the sixth inning) in 25 attempts, and his ERA on the year was 4.84. Asked to go out one last time, he only succeeded in proving he was hurt. Chased in the first, he subsequently underwent season-ending surgery on his elbow. He`s expected to be healthy in camp. While his flyballing tendencies mean he`ll never be a perfect fit with the Reds, he`s still got a solid combination of good heat and a nice curve. Milton could help a club with better middle relief help and a larger ballpark if managed carefully. That may seem like a lot of qualifiers, but it`s a far cry from being useless.
2006		In the long and sometimes sad history of the Reds, no one had managed to post a full-season 6.47 ERA before Eric Milton did last year, nor allow 40 home runs in a season. Nor has any Reds GM made as illogical a mistake on as important a free-agent signing. It wasn`t as if Milton was an unknown quantity, nor was he coming off a career year. His flyball/gopher ball tendencies were not a secret. Milton lives and (mostly) dies with a four-seam fastball. With his velocity down to average at best, and with mediocre off-speed stuff, he`s dead meat when he makes a mistake over the plate. A published scouting report on Milton after 2004 said he had a `lot of `quality intangibles.`` What it didn`t say is that major league hitters feast on pitchers with `plus intangibles` and mediocre stuff.
2005		Now, if there's a guy who you'd think should be adversely affected by Citizens Bank Park, it is Milton, a pronounced flyball pitcher whose problems with the longball have long been his Achilles' heel. Milton did, in fact, yield a league-high 43 bombs, but a majority of those were on the road: Opponents slugged .451 against him at Citizens, and .539 in away games. It is this disposition to giving up home runs that keeps Milton from being the pitcher that a lot of analysts want him to be. Groundball/flyball ratios are extremely stable for most pitchers, and so long as opponents are hitting the ball skyward more than 60% of the time against Milton, he's going to give up a lot of homers. He's one of the most overrated pitchers around, and Great American Ball Park, which enhances home runs but depresses the other aspects of offensive performance, is about the worst possible home for him.
2004		Milton came back from knee surgery late in the season, and pitched well against weak competition. Milton never really performed as well as many scouts and analysts had hoped. His peripheral numbers have been either flat or declining for a while, and at this point, the best chance for him becoming a front-of-the-rotation guy is that his arm got reinvigorated during a season off. More likely, he'll be a league average starter or so for $9 million. The Twins got a bunch of flotsam in Carlos Silva, Nick Punto, and a PTBNL for Milton, but deleting his salary while also opening a rotation spot for a corner like Grant Balfour should pay off nicely.
2003		There have been a lot of expectations loaded onto Milton, because we all keep thinking he’s finally going to start posting ERAs under four and crank out that season that makes people start comparing him to John Tudor or Ron Guidry. Heck, it still works, Guidry didn’t really have his first big season until he was 27. Milton had trouble with command of his fastball in June and July before breaking down with a knee injury in August. He hasn’t gotten to the point that he’s effective without his heat; he needs it to set up his curveball and make people bite on his changeup. It’s still worth harboring great expectations.
2002		You have to love that Chuck Knoblauch deal right about now. Milton was one of the top 25 starters in MLB last year, pitching a career-high 220 innings, posting his lowest ERA, and he still appears to be just scraping the surface of his talent. This year, he should take yet another step forward and join the top 10 or 15 MLB starters. A disastrous July and a couple of bad games in October made his second-half numbers look bad, but his strikeout rate increased as the year went along. The idea that a team with Mays, Milton, and Brad Radke at the front of its rotation could be seriously considered as a contraction candidate is laughable.
2001		He’s in a hitters' park, can count on crummy run support, and there are worries about his shoulder and elbow, but any team would love to have Eric Milton. He’s become an effective four-pitch left-hander, with everything working off of a fastball that has great movement. He’ll have starts in which teams are lucky to get good wood on anything. It would have been nice if the Twins had shut him down for September after he experienced some bursitis in his knee. He’s about to be recognized as one of the best starters in the league.
2000		He started the year having problems putting away hitters early, racking up big pitch counts by the sixth inning. As the season wore on, he gained greater command of a slider to freeze right-handed hitters and developed a change-up to drop on the lefties who were sitting on the slider. Add that to a fastball consistently in the low 90s and a snapping curve, and you’ve suddenly got one of the league’s best left-handed starters. The no-hitter may have been against a no-stars Angels lineup, but the stuff is there for Milton to do it against anybody, and the Angels weren’t all that special with Mo Vaughn in the lineup, anyway. By himself, Milton will end up rehabilitating the way the Knoblauch deal gets remembered. But then, he has to.
1999		Good and getting better. Milton got a year's experience under his belt without being abused; his overall numbers weren't exciting, but his performance was. Left-handers with fastballs like this make a lot of money playing baseball. He'll be to the next Minnesota championship what Frank Viola was to the 1987 flag.
1998		#1 draft pick out of the University of Maryland in 1996, Milton made his pro debut in 1997. To the Yankees’ credit, they didn’t waste his time in the lower levels, starting him out at high-A Tampa and jumping him to the Eastern League at midseason. He has a good build and a better fastball. Look for him to arrive in the major leagues late this year, and be in a rotation somewhere in 1999. One of the best pitching prospects in baseball.

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PITCHf/x Pitcher Profile

A Collaboration between BrooksBaseball.net and Baseball Prospectus - Pitch classifications provided by Pitch Info LLC

Although he has not thrown an MLB pitch in 2025, Eric Milton threw 396 pitches that were tracked by the PITCHf/x system in 2009, including pitches thrown in . In 2009, he relied primarily on his Fourseam Fastball (89mph), also mixing in a Slider (80mph), Curve (73mph) and Change (80mph). He also rarely threw a Cutter (87mph).