Trying to Rediscover Feel for His Secondaries, Tobias Myers Has (Split-)Changed Things Up

From the get-go, Tobias Myers found himself playing catch-up in his sophomore season. An oblique strain sidelined the right-hander in spring training; when he made his season debut in late April, he looked little like the pitcher who posted a 3.00 ERA in 138 innings with capable back-of-the-rotation peripherals a year ago, plus five scoreless innings in his postseason debut. In his first six games (five starts), Myers limped to a 4.95 ERA and 5.22 SIERA, with a 15.6% strikeout rate and 10.4% walk rate.

"When the oblique happened in spring, and then I wanted to get back as quick as I can, I was just kind of fighting feel for pitches still at that point," he said.

Myers was fighting the feel for his secondary pitches, in particular. When his cutter started backing up on him in camp instead of cutting slightly to the glove side, he began overcompensating with his release, adding more break but losing velocity. In 2024, his cutter averaged 89.2 mph, with 12.5 inches of induced vertical break and 3.3 inches of glove-side cut. In his first six outings of 2025, those figures were 87.2, 11.5, and 4.4, respectively.

"I wasn't getting the right cut on it," Myers recalled. "So I was just in between throwing it like a heater and backspinning it, and then it's not cutting, and then I try to over-cut it, and then it's 86-87 [mph]."

Just as impactful was the disappearance of Myers's changeup as a trusted weapon in his arsenal. It was a dominant pitch in his rookie season, holding opponents to a .163 wOBA while inducing whiffs on 44.4% of swings. He lost his feel for it this spring, though, and threw just 12 changeups throughout those first six appearances.

When Pat Murphy pulled Myers after two ugly innings against the Chicago White Sox on April 30, part of his rationale was that he did not throw a single changeup and failed to mix speeds. Nothing changed in subsequent outings, though, because Myers was unable to throw his existing circle change grip with the same conviction as his fastball.

"The goal is to have every pitch that I can just throw 100 percent [intensity], and I was always just in between with the circle change," he said. "It felt like when I put 100 percent, I'd spike it. Then I'd try to overcorrect that, and then I'm leaving my arm [behind], getting arm-side [misses], arm's late, body's moving too quick."

The issues with his secondaries left Myers even more dependent on his fastball. Its usage rate jumped from 40.5% a year ago to 48.6% in those first handful of appearances. It was less effective with increased exposure, yielding a .384 wOBA in those first six games, compared to a .318 mark as a rookie.

"When the cutter and the slider velo were down a little bit—when the slider was consistently like 83-ish, and the cutter was down to 87—when I'm in between there, I feel like I kind of have nothing to throw with up there other than a fastball," he explained. "And then at that time, I was still throwing the old changeup probably five percent [of the time]. It was kind of like just pitching with a fastball there."

On May 18, the Brewers optioned Myers to Nashville for what became a nearly two-month stay in Triple-A. During that time in a lower-pressure environment, he experimented with new changeup grips to reincorporate more offspeed pitches into his outings. He tried a kick-changeup, a relatively new variant of the pitch that has recently gained traction throughout baseball, but it didn't take after some initial success.

"The metrics were the same, but execution was like 11 out of 12 [success rate]," he said. "Then the next two weeks, it was gone. Like, I could not throw it."

Myers then switched to a hybrid split-change grip. That was when things began progressing in the right direction.

"I started playing with a splitter before my July 4 start, and it was like night and day the way it felt out of my hand," he said. "It just felt pretty much like a fastball, and then the location was coming out a lot better than the circle change."

Myers returned to the big leagues after that outing, where pitching coach Chris Hook helped him tweak the grip to achieve more consistent arm-side fade. Trade deadline acquisition Shelby Miller, who revived his career two seasons ago by adding a splitter, has also become a sounding board as he fine-tunes the pitch.

"I didn't want to go directly to a deep splitter and just rip that in the middle of the season, so I kind of wanted to start slow," Myers said of the grip. "So it's really not much of a split. I'm kind of running the index finger on one of the seams, and then the middle finger's right outside the other seam."

When the Brewers recalled him for a spot start against the New York Mets last weekend, Myers leaned heavily on the split-change against a lineup stacked with left-handed hitters. He threw it 15 times, surpassing the number of changeups he had thrown in his previous outings combined. He threw eight more to close out the team's 12th straight win on Wednesday, including the pitch that notched a strikeout for the final out.

"It just keeps feeling better and better every day," he said. "I keep feeling more comfortable with it, so I'm going to keep throwing it as much as I can."

So far, the pitch's total break has been almost identical to Myers's old changeup, but it has flashed some late drop because it spins less (1576 rpm versus 1801) at a firmer velocity (83.6 mph versus 80.1). Myers is still tweaking it in hopes of adding more consistent depth, but most importantly, he trusts it and can throw it with the same conviction as his fastball.

"I think just having the mentality of throwing everything like a heater is where I want to be, and I think the splitter definitely plays off of that," he said. "Like, just heater mentality. I just trust the grip, and I just throw it as hard as I can, like a heater."

Myers thinks he and Hook have also made progress with the cutter, although his comfort level with that pitch has not yet matched the trust in his split-change.

"I don't want to go up there using it like I was last year if I don't feel the same with it," he said. "So I think once I get that back and I'll be able to steal some strikes [to lefties] on the back half with the back-door cutter, and I got the splitter off that, [four-seam] up, I think we'll have a good amount of weapons to play with."