Tobias Myers' rising fastball can get even better
- jagreens
- Aug 21, 2024
- 6 min read
On Tuesday, the Rays recalled Junior Caminero — the No. 2 prospect in baseball, according to MLB Pipeline. And while I’m eager to watch Caminero in his second go-around at the big league level, that’s not what I want to write about. At least, not yet.
Caminero’s call-up reminded me of the trade that brought him to the Rays organization: a one-for-one swap with the Guardians for Tobias Myers, a right-handed pitching prospect, at the time in the upper-level of Tampa Bay’s minor league system.
For a while, this trade looked lopsided. Caminero blossomed into a terror at the plate, adept at hitting the ball exceptionally hard to all fields. Myers flamed out in Cleveland, posting a 6.00 ERA in his lone half-season with the organization. And while the trade is bound to remain lopsided, maybe it has more to do with the fact that Myers doesn’t play for the Guardians — not because Myers is bad himself.
Myers, now with the Brewers, has a 2.81 ERA through 19 games (18 starts), a sturdy presence amid a Milwaukee rotation ravaged by injury. As the Brewers hold down a commanding 11-game lead in the NL Central, Myers has become their most-dependable starter.
Myers’s weapon is his 4-seam fastball, which touts one of the best fastball shapes in baseball. Of a pool of 531 qualified pitchers and their 4-seamers, Myers’s offering has the 37th-highest Run Value. That sandwiches his 4-seamer between the formidable Dodger triumvirate of Tyler Glasnow, Jack Flaherty, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Pretty good company, I’d say.
Though Myers doesn’t throw hard — his 4-seamer averages just 92.9 mph — he generates exceptional Induced Vertical Break (IVB), which measures how much rise a pitcher creates from the way he manipulates the baseball. While a pitch travels to the plate on a downward slope (thanks, gravity), a pitcher can deploy spin to resist gravity, thereby causing the pitch to drop less than the hitter would anticipate. That trick emits the illusion of rise, making the pitch more difficult to hit.
Myers’s 4-seam fastball has an IVB of 19.0 inches, the 18th-most IVB of any 4-seam fastball in baseball. In comparison, for a right-handed pitcher, the league average IVB on a 4-seam fastball is 15.7 inches. Myers’s spin efficiency is also 99.6 — the highest of any pitcher on their 4-seamer — which is to say that he uses virtually all of his backspin to create ‘rise.’
And yet, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows. While Myers’s 4-seam fastball has outstanding shape, it hardly generates any swing-and-miss. There are 174 right-handed pitchers with 4-seam fastballs with an above-average IVB; within that group, Myers ranks 145th on his 4-seam Whiff Rate, which raises two immediate questions. First, how is his 4-seamer still an effective pitch, and second, can he keep this success up without generating swing-and-miss?
We’ll divide our exploration into a couple of parts, beginning with Myers’s approach to right-handed batters (RHB). His 4-seamer has largely been successful here, limiting RHB to a .252 wOBA with a respectable 19.5% Whiff% (Among RHP, the league average is 23.7%). Location appears to be the driving factor: Myers dots his 4-seamer at the top of the zone, the ideal spot for a ‘rising’ 4-seam fastball. His swing-and-miss is concentrated at the top of the zone, too. And he runs into trouble when the 4-seamer stays down, bleeding into the heart of the plate and the bottom of the zone. That makes sense, considering that, as a whole, Myers’s 4-seamer runs a high FB%, IFFB%, and HR/FB% — his goal is to induce weak contact in the air, a result of the hitter getting underneath the baseball.
But against left-handed batters (LHB), it’s a different story: a .385 wOBA with just a 14.4% Whiff% against the 4-seam fastball (Among RHP, the league average is 20.3%). What we see is a pitcher who doesn’t yet trust his 4-seamer to beat LHB. Myers throws his 4-seamer less often (by 7%) against LHB, and he throws it all over the place, as if he’s still searching for a location that will pay dividends. If it’s in the zone, so far, LHB will hit it, which doesn’t leave him many viable places to go.
LHB: In-Zone wOBA .435, Out-of-Zone wOBA .314
RHB: In-Zone wOBA .290, Out-of-Zone wOBA .162
We’re less concerned with the out-of-zone disparity, and more hung up on the fact that LHB are crushing any 4-seamer in the zone, whereas RHB can hardly hit the pitch. Myers is coming in the zone slightly more often — a 56% In-Zone% to RHB and a 58% In-Zone% to LHB — but he wouldn’t benefit from throwing it out of the zone more, since RHB and LHB run an identical 33% chase rate. A quick glance at the batted-ball profile shows similar results:
LHB, on 53 4-seamers put into play: 41% FB, 26% LD, 33% GB
RHB, on 65 4-seamers put into play: 40% FB, 30% LD, 30% GB
But what matters here is the quality of contact, specifically on the fly balls. Let’s remember that a hitter’s Launch Angle ‘Sweet Spot’ is between 8 and 32 degrees. While a hitter can find success with a LA>32, these fly balls are generally less productive.
RHB have a .306 wOBA on their fly balls against Myers’s 4-seam fastball, with two-thirds of such balls hit at a Launch Angle greater than 32 degrees. LHB, meanwhile, have a .681 wOBA, and only half of those are with a Launch Angle greater than 32 degrees. All of that jargon goes to say: Myers uses his rising fastball to get under the barrel of RHB, but LHB are able to avoid popping up, thereby generating contact more likely to cause damage.
We mentioned earlier that the location of Myers’s 4-seam fastball varies when facing right-handed hitters compared to left-handed hitters. Against RHB, he pitches up in the zone with intent, concentrating his 4-seamers at the letters and above. But against LHB, there’s not one consistent cluster. That may be partially because Myers is still searching for a location that works — he hasn’t found success anywhere in the zone.
But why hasn’t he elevated the pitch with the same consistency? That answer may lie in the count.
LHB vs. Myers’s 4-seam fastball, behind in the count: .115 wOBA
LHB vs. Myers’s 4-seam fastball, ahead in the count: .524 wOBA
The discrepancy isn’t entirely surprising, since we’d expect hitters to perform better when they’re ahead in the count, especially when they receive a fastball. Still, the location of these pitches suggest that there’s a path for Myers to improve, even without necessarily generating more swing-and-miss.
When Myers is ahead in the count, he doesn’t have to worry about throwing his 4-seamer for a strike, so he can elevate it — much in the vein of how he elevates his 4-seamer to RHB, maximizing its rise. And it’s worked; he’s allowed just four singles off his 4-seamer in these scenarios. But when he’s behind, there’s more pressure to throw a strike, and that’s where we see Myers zero in on the strike zone. And when he throws his 4-seamer low, he nullifies its superpower. Plus, with a low target, there’s always the possibility that a rising fastball bleeds north into the heart of the plate.
Myers could also tinker with his pitchmix a bit to maximize his 4-seamer. Against LHB, he has two good pitches — a changeup and a slider — that account for just 30% of his total offerings, yet the majority of his swing-and-miss. Perhaps increasing their usage could lead to better counts. As of now, his changeup (29%) and slider (40%) run relatively low In-Zone rates to LHB. So, when Myers falls behind, LHB can really sit on the fastball. That’s where he gets hurt: Myers throws his 4-seamer in spots that negate its rise, and in situations where hitters can more or less anticipate it.
Nonetheless, in rather shorter order, Myers has established himself as a reliable starter for a bona fide postseason team. It’s a remarkable turn of events for a pitcher who, though just 26, appeared to be written off just a few years ago, DFA’d after a poor year at Triple-A. Now, it’s a developmental win for the Brewers, who will ride Myers as far — or, perhaps as high — as he can take them.
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