Case of the yips?

This is the notebook lead I filed for tomorrow's paper. Tough times for a really good guy, and here's hoping he can find a way out of this.

Dodgers minor-league left-hander Greg Miller spent all of 2004 and most of 2005 reviving a once-promising career that had begun to appear dead after he didn't immediately bounce back from a shoulder operation that was supposed to sideline him for only a few weeks in '04. The result was a feel-good story in perseverance that by this spring had landed Miller back on the organizational radar, with a good chance of being in the big leagues sometime this year.
But now, Miller might have run smack into another career-threatening issue.
``He has been wild, and he just has to try to harness that wildness,'' Dodgers player development director DeJon Watson said.
But Miller, still just 22, might need something stronger than a harness. In eight appearances (seven starts) at Triple-A Las Vegas this season, he has walked 32 batters in 23 2/3 innings. Twenty of those walks have come in his past four starts, none of which saw him last longer than four innings or walk fewer than four batters.
It all came to a head last Friday against Oklahoma, when Miller lasted just one-third of an inning, hit the first batter, committed a balk, threw a wild pitch, gave up a sacrifice fly, then walked the next four batters in succession -- with a second wild pitch mixed in -- before manager Lorenzo Bundy mercifully came to get him.
At times, Miller has been ``effectively wild.'' He has 27 strikeouts, and while his 6.46 ERA is bad, it isn't as bad as it could be considering he was charged with five runs in that one-third of an inning his last time out -- B.J. LaMura, the man who relieved Miller, immediately gave up a grand slam to Texas prospect Nate Gold.
Watson stopped short of saying Miller's wildness has become a mental issue.
``I wouldn't go there yet,'' Watson said.
Miller's next scheduled outing is Thursday at Portland, but Hong-Chih Kuo will start that game with Miller coming in behind him.