San Diego Padres Closer Overcame Health Challenges to Dominate Big Leagues

Published: June 18, 2026

By Mallory Mattingly

San Diego Padres closer Mason Miller could have quit baseball after he found out he had Type 1 diabetes, but he knew God had a plan.

“…You know, for me, we talked about reflecting on the last couple of years of success. I think my reflection goes back a lot further than that, to high school and college, and you know, before I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. There’s a lot of failure. Baseball was not a realistic aspiration, and I really wasn’t even having success at Division Three college,” Miller said on the “Sports Spectrum” podcast.

“You look at the statistics on guys that play collegiate baseball or post high school baseball, and you’re like, yeah, I’m part of a select few. Where I was playing Division Three baseball, Wayne Spring University felt a million miles away from even sniffing a chance to play post-collegiately outside of a men’s league. Even if I wanted to go play independent baseball, they weren’t taking a guy that had a 7 ERA in Division Three baseball, throwing 85 miles an hour,” he continued.

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Miller struggled to improve his skills in college because he was dealing with a host of health issues. Once he went to the doctor, he finally found a solution.

“I got diagnosed, and it just changed my complete physical stature that summer and just like all the things that I had been doing,” the pitcher said. “I did have good training habits, and I kind of really took off after I got onto insulin and really started managing, you know, my blood glucose and things like that.”

Miller described how “motivating” it was to “see results” from all the things he had begun doing after he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes.

However, when he was diagnosed, he felt like it was easy for him to “sit there and ask, ‘Why God? Why me? Why now?'”

“At the time, it was still called juvenile diabetes, and all the other people had been diagnosed around the same time, and we were in these educational classes, it was like me at 20 years old, and then not a kid over like 12 or 13,” he explained. “So, I was like, I’m almost twice as old as the eldest other kid getting diagnosed, like, why is this happening to me now?”

“I think it just my story as a whole is a testament of God placing you in places that you’re supposed to be, putting you through challenges and journeys that you need to go through to become the person that you are today,” he emphasized.

Now, Miller can throw 104 miles per hour and is the Padres’ go-to relief pitcher. However, starting on June 15, the Padres are without Miller for at least 72 hours, as he was put on the bereavement list so he can attend to a personal matter.

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