Myers surprised just about everyone with a big rookie year in the rotation
We’re continuing our rankings of the Brewers’ 10 most valuable players in 2024 with starting pitcher Tobias Myers. Myers finished the season with 2.7 bWAR and 2.2 fWAR, good for fifth and eighth on the team, respectively.
Myers surprised just about everyone with his strong rookie season. A former sixth-round pick, Myers spent eight seasons in the minors, spanning 141 appearances (123 starts) with a 4.24 ERA and 636 strikeouts across 620 1⁄3 innings.
He made 27 appearances (25 starts) for the Brewers in 2024, finishing with an even 3.00 ERA as he struck out 127 batters across 138 innings. Batters hit .242/.295/.387 against him, and he was certainly in contention for NL Rookie of the Month in June, when he went 4-0 across five starts with 24 strikeouts across 31 1⁄3 innings.
While some of the underlying stats may not scream “shutdown pitcher” (e.g. 3.91 FIP and 4.22 xERA), but he still did a great job of limiting walks, with a 6.3% walk rate that ranked in the 77th percentile, per Baseball Savant.
As mentioned above, the rest of his Savant page features a lot of blue, as he ranks in the bottom 50% in xERA (38th percnetile), xBA (32nd percentile), velocity (31st percentile), average exit velocity (23rd percentile), chase rate (49th percentile), whiff rate (15th percentile), strikeout rate (44th percentile), barrel rate (43rd percentile), hard-hit rate (50th percentile), and groundball rate (22nd percentile).
Still, though, he had a great season, and the underlying numbers don’t matter in the moment so long as you’re winning (which the Brewers did a lot of with him on the hill — 13-12 as a starter and another 2-0 in his relief appearances for a 15-12 record).
With Freddy Peralta and Brandon Woodruff at the top of the rotation, Myers will look to repeat his success as one of the returners to the rotation in 2025, as he’s still pre-arbitration even at age 26.
We’ll continue our rankings of the 10 most valuable Brewers each Monday and Wednesday into early December. Come back on Wednesday to see who we have at No. 3.