Tobias Myers is Back, Thanks to Joe Ross's Back

Only three pitchers have taken every turn in the Brewers starting rotation through the first six-plus weeks of the 2024 season: Freddy Peralta, Colin Rea, and Joe Ross. Now, we can cross Ross off that list, as he heads to the injured list with a low back strain. Ross left his start early Monday night in Miami, with an ailment manager Pat Murphy said he had been nursing for a few days.

This hardly qualifies as a surprise. Ross has never thrown even 110 innings in MLB in a season, and the only time he's thrown 150 or more innings across all levels was way back in 2015, at age 22. Ross gets hurt; it's part of why he was available so cheaply this winter. The Brewers replaced him Tuesday by calling up righthander Tobias Myers, hoping he can be a fairly stable replacement for Ross over the coming weeks. Myers is getting his second audition for a big-league job, though this time, he might end up working out of the bullpen, or in a modified role different from the full-fledged starting gig he worked when he was first promoted.

Myers only made one appearance with the Triple-A Nashville Sounds after being sent down earlier this month--a two-inning relief appearance last week. He was due to start Tuesday night for the Sounds, before Ross's injury necessitated his immediate return to the majors. In that one outing, Myers's stuff looked ever-so-slightly different than it did while he was starting for the Sounds and Brewers prior to his demotion.

Here's Myers's pitch movement chart prior to going back to Nashville, working as a starter:

In that lone game after returning to Triple-A, though, Myers didn't use his sinker or his changeup, and there were subtle changes to the average movement of his other offerings.

Both his slider and his curveball had a more vertical shape in that appearance, and his fastball didn't run as much to the arm side. The samples are tiny and may not be indicative of anything, but those changes would be beneficial to Myers's overall profile--as would leaning away from the sinker and changeup, which don't suit his arm slot or his motor preference well.

At the same time, of course, slimming down his arsenal makes Myers slightly less viable as a starter. He's more likely to be valuable as a reliever if he sustains these changes--even as a multi-inning reliever--but he's less likely to be the starting pitcher the team hoped he could be when they first recalled him last month.

Since Ross just started (however briefly) last night and the Brewers have a day off Thursday, the team could wait a while to sort out the starting rotation. Myers could start as soon as Wednesday, but there's been no immediate indication that that's the plan. Instead, by calling him up now (rather than bringing up a reliever to provide a fresh arm out of the pen), the club is at least hinting at viewing Myers as just such an arm--a reinforcement for the bullpen, in the event of a blowup from Robert Gasser Tuesday night.

If Myers did start Wednesday, pushing Peralta back to Friday, he could settle into that spot in the rotation for the foreseeable future, or he and the rehabbing DL Hall could take up a piggyback arrangement over the coming few weeks. Friday also kicks off a stretch of 13 games without a day off, so Hall could come back as part of a short-lived six-man rotation, with Myers still in the mix.

For now, there's tremendous uncertainty, from the top of the Milwaukee pitching staff to the bottom. Ross can't return for at least 15 days, and given his age and track record, it seems just as likely to be a month before we see him again, despite Murphy downplaying the severity of the injury in discussions with reporters Tuesday afternoon. Over the last three years, when pitchers miss time with a low back strain, it's usually a good bit longer than two weeks before they return.

Myers is back, but the Brewers only seem to be scrambling more frantically for healthy arms with each passing week. That pattern has to abate soon. In the meantime, it'll be interesting to see how they use the remaining healthy arms available to them.