A Natural Pairing, Tyler Alexander and the Brewers Can Help Each Other in 2025

Bouncing between roles is nothing new for Tyler Alexander, who (by now) is plenty comfortable with his niche. That’s precisely why the Brewers signed the 30-year-old swingman at the outset of spring training.

“You learn along the way,” the left-hander reflected from his locker at American Family Fields of Phoenix. “You take the bad, you take the good, and you sort of figure out a routine that works best for both. And that's what I learned, is to take kind of a reliever mindset into my starts. You just kind of learn.”

The Brewers, as they’ve done with past depth starters, had Alexander follow his usual routine of stretching out in Arizona.

“I've kind of done the same thing for the last four years in terms of my build-up in spring training, where you build up to four, maybe five innings, and then that way I'm stretched out as a starter, or I'm ready to slide into that long relief role,” he said. “I’m just prepared to throw innings in whatever manner that is.”

Alexander pitched twice in relief in New York during opening weekend, but Aaron Civale’s hamstring strain promptly kicked him back to preparing like a starter. As of this writing, the Brewers have not announced a starter for Friday night against the Cincinnati Reds, but they’ve lined up Alexander to be available as a bulk-innings pitcher.

Like Colin Rea, Bryse Wilson, and others before him, the former Detroit Tiger and Tampa Bay Ray is an unassuming innings-eater who lacks velocity but understands the angles he must create to help his kitchen-sink arsenal play up the most. That means generating different looks depending on a hitter’s handedness. Righties saw plenty of cutters and four-seamers last year, while lefties saw sweeping sliders and sinkers.

A glove-side mover is the linchpin to each approach, and both pitches have cycled through various forms throughout the last few seasons. Alexander’s cutter has oscillated between a true cutter and a slider-like pitch. It held the former shape for most of 2023, but after he lowered his arm slot last season, it morphed back into the latter version.

“That's kind of fluctuated throughout the years,” Alexander said of the cutter’s shape. “As my arm slot and different things change, that pitch changes.”

This spring, he aimed to restore that riding cutter shape from his lower slot. The early returns have been promising. In two relief appearances in New York, Alexander’s cutter had nearly three more inches of lift on average, two fewer inches of glove-side movement, and an extra tick of velocity.

That shape best allows the cutter to serve its intended purpose. Along with his four-seamer, Alexander uses it predominantly to attack right-handed hitters high and inside.

“If I can have everything play up and in to a righty with my four-seam, with my cutter, and then maybe a front hip two-seam, that opens up everything away,” he explained. “I can throw changeups. I can throw anything back door, sweepers or cutters. I can even stick a four-seam down there. But my game plan to righties is hard in, soft down and away.”

Alexander originally introduced the sweeper while pitching for the Tigers in 2022, as a slurve-like pitch to replace his short slider.

“I wanted something (as a) ball out of the hand that moved a lot, so I switched to, in my mind, a Rich Hill curveball with a Nestor Cortes sweeper grip. So I gripped the sweeper and tried to throw it more like a slider, so it ended up being a big, loopy breaking ball, which I loved.”

He and the Tigers eventually concluded that the slurve did not tunnel well with the rest of his arsenal—to land it in the strike zone, Alexander needed to release it higher and further toward the left-handed batter’s box—so in 2023, they reverted to his original slider. When he joined the Rays last season, they wanted to resurrect it as an actual sweeper: a sidespinning breaking ball with minimal drop and extreme horizontal movement.

“They wanted me to hold vert on it,” he recalled. “Instead of thinking of a curveball with depth, they wanted something sweepy.”

The Rays helped Alexander achieve the right shape with the pitch, adding a few inches of carry and glove-side break.

It became the cornerstone of his attack against same-handed opponents. Lefties managed just a .190 wOBA against the sweeper, which also set up the other shapes and locations Alexander needed to retire them. The overall left-handed wOBA against him fell from .347 in 2023 to .326 last year.

“The sweeper has opened up a lot of room to lefties,” he said. “When I throw it well, when it’s effective, I can throw it down the middle and sweep it away, which gives me four-seam away, gives me two-seam in, or four-seam up and in, it gives me something down and back-door to them.”

Both parties also felt the sweeper played better with the cutter than the short slider did. It allowed him to relegate the cutter, which would jam righties but break toward a lefty’s sweet spot, to more of a show-me pitch in those situations.

“I’ve gotten away from throwing cutters to lefties late (in the count). I throw it a little early,” Alexander said, later elaborating how its shape plays differently based on the matchup. “To righties, I'm looking to break their bat. To lefties, it tends to run into the barrel. So I throw it early to show that I have it, and then I can play off of it.”

The veteran also worked this spring to improve his two-seamer’s effectiveness and make his changeup a more prominent piece of his arsenal, including in left-on-left matchups. His experience along the way confirmed that after a year with the Rays, the Brewers were a great next stop.

“They find something you're very good at, and then you lean on it,” Alexander said of Tampa Bay’s pitching gurus. “What they would do is say, ‘Hey, this pitch was at its best in this year. Let's try to get that. This pitch was best in this year.’ So they kind of pick and choose what pitch was best in what year, and then try to put together your arsenal that way.”

That approach helped him, but Milwaukee’s pitching development environment suits him especially well.

“I find it's a little bit more feel-based here, which I like. I'm pretty feel-based. Not that I dislike Tampa. I thought they were very good for my career, but a little bit too reliant on analytics, maybe. Here, it’s analytics combined with the eye test, which I think is best for me because I’m very feel-based.”

Both sides are hoping that comfort will bear fruit. Alexander noted they each need something from one another. He wants to correct the shortcomings that produced a career-worst 5.10 ERA last year, and the injury-ravaged Brewers’ staff requires innings. After a pair of season-opening cameos, Friday night may be his first extended opportunity to show what he can contribute.