After seven seasons in the minors, Tobias Myers has become a key part of the Brewers’ rotation (2024)

He was No. 80 in spring training, a non-roster invitee, one of the first players the Milwaukee Brewers cut.

“He was not one of our top 25 pitchers,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said, which seems hard to believe, considering that rookie right-hander Tobias Myers is now arguably the ace of a first-place team with a nine-game lead in the National League Central.

Murphy, though, was not exaggerating.

The Brewers invited 32 pitchers to spring training. They reassigned three to minor-league camp in their first round of cuts on March 5. They shipped out three more on March 10, including Myers.

“I really didn’t know much about him,” said Murphy, who is in his first season as Brewers manager after spending eight years as their bench coach, “other than I knew he had no chance to make the team.”

Myers’ expectations also were low. The Brewers are his sixth organization. In 2022, he went 1-15 with a 7.82 ERA pitching for three different clubs at Triple A. His goal this season was to reach the majors. If it happened, he figured it would be in the role he and the Brewers discussed in spring training — long relief.

Brewers general manager Matt Arnold had slightly higher expectations, thinking Myers eventually could figure into the rotation mix. In November 2022, the team signed Myers to a two-year minor-league deal with precisely that idea in mind. Yet, even after Myers showed improvement at Triple A last season, the Brewers declined to add him to their 40-man roster, exposing him to the Rule 5 draft. Not that it was much of a gamble. Every team passed on Myers rather than pay $100,000 for him with the requirement that he stay on the major-league roster all season.

Myers, 26, seemed destined to remain on the fringes, as he had for seven professional seasons. He was traded three times, designated for assignment by a fourth club, released by a fifth. He kept going, making 20 or more minor-league starts in 2018 and each season from 2021 to ’23. But his brief stint with the Brewers in major-league camp was typical of his spotty career. In eight innings, Myers had a 7.88 ERA.

It turns out, though, he was with the right team — a team that suffered one pitching injury after another early in the season, creating opportunity even for a journeyman who wore No. 80 in camp.

Myers’ first promotion on April 17 lasted only one day. The Brewers summoned him to be an extra arm in their bullpen, didn’t pitch him and returned him to Triple-A Nashville. For the next six weeks, he shuttled back and forth between Nashville and Milwaukee. Each time he returned, he replaced an injured pitcher. First Wade Miley, then Joe Ross, then Robert Gasser.

And then, finally, Myers stuck.

Since rejoining the Brewers for good on June 5, Myers has a 2.20 ERA in 14 starts. Only two pitchers, Pittsburgh’s Paul Skenes and Houston’s Hunter Brown, have lower ERAs in that span. The ride on Myers’ four-seam fastball, coming from a high arm slot, makes him difficult to hit. His fastball averages only 92.8 mph, but the “vert” on his four-seamer, or vertical movement without gravity, is the 11th best in the game, minimum 500 pitches.

Myers’ nondescript spring, his awful 2022 campaign, his seven seasons in the minors, they’re all behind him now. Come October, it seems almost certain he will figure prominently in the Brewers’ rotation plans.

“It’s a great story. Really, it’s the story of our season,” Murphy said. “Who are these guys?”

The first trade is always the most surprising.

Myers was a sixth-round pick by the Baltimore Orioles out of Winter Haven (Fla.) H.S. in 2016. Barely a year later, he was at his host family’s home in Aberdeen, Md., when his Class-A roommate, Bobby Bonilla’s son, Brandon, raced up the stairs with big news.

In a last-minute move before the trade deadline, the Orioles had sent Myers to the Tampa Bay Rays for infielder Tim Beckham.

Myers, a few days short of his 19th birthday, was not savvy to the ways of baseball. He thought Bonilla, a left-handed pitcher who spent two years in the Orioles’ system, was kidding.

“I don’t even think I knew what a trade deadline was my first season,” Myers said. “I was like, wait, we can get traded? I thought it was just like a big-league thing.”

Myers spent more than four years in the Tampa Bay organization, rising to Triple A. But in November 2021, the Rays faced their usual 40-man roster crunch, and needed to sort through their pitching prospects. They wound up protecting righties Tommy Romero and Calvin Faucher over Myers. And rather than risk losing Myers in the Rule 5 draft, they traded him to Cleveland for a 18-year-old infielder who had just torn up the Dominican Summer League — Junior Caminero, who is now the game’s No. 3 prospect according to The Athletic’s Keith Law, and back in the majors with the Rays.

The Guardians placed Myers on their 40-man roster. His ill-fated 2022 season followed. In July, the Guardians traded him to the San Francisco Giants for cash. In August, the Chicago White Sox claimed him off waivers from the Giants. In September, the White Sox released him.

“At the time we acquired him, we felt he had a chance to develop into a quality major-league starting pitcher,” Guardians president of baseball operations Chris Antonetti said. “He had a four-pitch mix highlighted by a fastball with well-above-average ride. He had gained more than 2 mph over the preceding few years. Unfortunately, his velo and secondary pitches regressed with us.”

Myers said his problems in ’22 began in spring training. He was in major-league camp for the first time, new to the Cleveland organization, unsure how to handle himself. The Giants, after acquiring him, sent him to their training complex in Arizona for evaluation, and wound up pitching him only twice at Triple A.

He was a work in progress the entire season, tinkering with his mechanics, always trying something new.

“I never really felt comfortable. I didn’t feel like myself,” Myers said. “It was one of those years where, when August came around, I was like, ‘Man, I’m ready to go home and reset everything.’”

Which is what Myers did, determined to resume throwing in a way that felt natural, to get back to the pitcher who was good enough out of high school to be drafted in the sixth round. He never thought of quitting. He always believed he would succeed.

All of his failure, Brewers pitching coach Chris Hook said, created a certain resilience, a foundation that gave Myers strength.

“He doesn’t fold under pressure. He just keeps coming,” Hook said. “That’s what makes me so excited every time he starts. I know he’s never going to give in, never going to give up.”

After his 2022 nightmare, Myers prioritized one thing in his search for a new team — an invitation to major-league spring training.

The Minnesota Twins all but assured him of a Triple-A job, Myers said, but would not bring him to major-league camp. The Brewers agreed to that condition, but had one of their own, telling Myers he probably would open the season at Double A.

It was a step back. But knowing the Brewers’ reputation for getting the most out of pitchers, Myers accepted their two-year minor-league deal. In a sense, he was coming full circle. The Brewers were the only team to invite him to a pre-draft workout in 2016.

His instincts about Milwaukee proved correct. The Brewers, Myers said, “gave me the freedom to be myself.” In the middle of last season, they also taught him a slider. Myers already threw a fastball, cutter, changeup and curve, but lacked a breaking pitch in the 84- to 86-mph range. He had difficulty, from his high arm slot, getting horizontal movement on a slider.

“I was like, ‘I’ll try it, but I’ve never been able to do it,’” Myers recalled. “They said, ‘No, we want you to throw a bullet slider that bites down like a hard curveball.’”

That approach suited Myers, who takes a fastball mentality with every pitch. He made 27 appearances at Double A and two at Triple A, finishing the season with a combined 4.93 ERA. A significant improvement over 2022. But still not great.

If Myers was on the verge of a breakthrough, it also wasn’t evident in his second spring with the Brewers, which all but ended before it started. But on April 23, with the team’s injuries mounting, he made his major-league debut, starting against the Pirates.

The first batter Myers faced was Andrew McCutchen. Myers, like McCutchen, is from Polk County, Fla. McCutchen hosted a baseball camp every year in his native Fort Meade. Myers once attended the camp as a child.

Great moment, right?

McCutchen hit Myers’ first pitch, a 90.5-mph fastball, for a home run.

Other pitchers might have crumbled. Myers allowed only three other hits, all singles. In five innings, he did not give up another run.

“I walked away from it going, ‘Wow, you know what? This guy has something to him,’” Murphy said.

The journey, though, did not end there. Myers’ velocity fluctuated. So did his performance. Desperate to stay in the majors, he found himself trying to do too much. After his third demotion of the season, on June 1, he decided to change his mindset. Just as Murphy preached, he would worry only about the day in front of him.

Myers figured he would be down for a while. Four days later, he was back. And on an off-day in Detroit before he rejoined the rotation, he experienced an epiphany while playing catch with righty Freddy Peralta and the Brewers’ bullpen catchers on a large grassy area next to the team hotel.

“It felt so much like COVID in 2020, when me and my buddies would go out to play catch in some random patch of grass because all the fields were closed,” Myers said. “At that time in my life, all I wanted to do was play baseball. Something about that day, I was just like, you know what, every time I get the ball the rest of this year, I’m going to cherish it and just really enjoy it and give it all my all.”

The next day, he shut out the Tigers for eight innings on one hit.

“I was like, wow, it’s doable,” Myers said.

For nearly three months now, Myers has been on a roll. His 4.23 expected ERA is higher than his actual 2.99, so some regression might be in order. But at this point, would anyone bet against him?

Myers wears No. 36 now, a number once worn by Hall of Famer pitchers Jim Kaat and Gaylord Perry. He has gone from an afterthought in camp to a pitcher likely to start in the postseason.

“We probably didn’t have that on the bingo card in spring training,” said Arnold, the Brewers’ GM, chuckling.

Nope. But they sure are comfortable calling Myers’ number now.

(Top photo: Patrick McDermott / Getty Images)