Laura Albanese: Mets' Tobias Myers is a strike-throwing Swiss Army knife of incredible value
Mets relief pitcher Tobias Myers celebrates after the final out to defeat the Arizona Diamondbacks at Chase Field on Friday in Phoenix. Credit: Getty Images/Chris Coduto
PHOENIX
When Tobias Myers got the final out of his save against the Diamondbacks on Friday, he started toward the dugout, only to be greeted by the long line of players heading toward the field for the handshake line.
“When I struck out the last guy, I kinda forgot the game was ending,” Myers told Newsday on Saturday after collecting his first career save. “So that will tell you where my head was at.”
Where it’s “at” is in the game . . . any part of the game.
Myers, who came to the Mets as part of the Freddy Peralta trade, takes a yeoman’s approach to pitching: Get an assignment and get the job done, whatever it may be. On Friday, that meant sitting in the visitors’ bullpen as Devin Williams finished out the ninth inning of a tie game and auditing the situation.
“Yesterday, having [Austin] Warren [unavailable], having Brazo [Huascar Brazoban] down, I was looking around the bullpen,” he said. “It was only me and Sean [Manaea] in there.”
Clock in. Strikeout, pop-out, strikeout. Clock out. Get a new souvenir game ball for the mantel. Not a bad day’s work.
“What did your tweet say?” manager Carlos Mendoza said, referring to this reporter’s attempt at a joke. “What are we going to ask him to do next? Drive the team bus?”
It’s an exaggeration, but just barely. On Wednesday, Myers pitched the sixth inning of the Mets’ win over the Rockies. Friday came the save, and he was a candidate to open the series finale on Sunday before the Mets decided to go with Brazoban.
He is the Mets’ Swiss Army knife and a valuable if under-the-radar piece of a team trying to survive the wreckage of April. To do so, they’ll need to continue to navigate Kodai Senga’s injury as well as some challenging bullpen construction — the result of Manaea and David Peterson joining the unit after ineffective starts to their seasons.
“He’s been huge for us in a lot of different ways — as a multi-inning guy, as an opener, high leverage [Friday],” Mendoza said. “It says a lot about who he is as a competitor, as a player, as a human and how much he cares and how much he wants to help. It’s good to have guys like that.”
Myers has been highly reliable and had a 2.05 ERA before a clunker in Colorado this past week. At first look, his stuff isn’t flashy. His fastball averages 92.3 mph, but its elite vertical movement (“rise”) generates a lot of weak contact. His splitter acts more like a split-change and is a lethal pitch that plays well off the heater. He also throws a cutter and a slider.
But it’s the mentality that sells it.
“He throws strikes,” Mendoza said. “He’s not afraid of contact. He’s going to attack. He’s got good pitches, too . . . But he’s not afraid.”
The fearlessness is hard-fought and a key to his versatility.
At 27, Myers is a baseball nomad who is with his seventh organization. And in 2022, it nearly all imploded: Pitching for Triple-A teams in three different farm systems, he went 1-15 with a 7.82 ERA in 23 games (22 starts).
In a Q&A with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in 2024, Myers said he was “in my head, thinking,” and it exacerbated his struggles. Of course, the reason he was doing a Q&A with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel was because he was able to extricate himself from the mental tailspin.
He made his major-league debut as a starter with the Brewers that year, compiling a 3.00 ERA in 27 games (25 starts). And if Mets fans had any memory of Myers before his arrival in Flushing, it was this: He manhandled them in Game 3 of the 2024 Wild Card Series, pitching five innings of two-hit, no-run ball (before, you know, Pete Alonso took Williams yard).
“I’m just grateful to be out there,” Myers said, a sentiment that rings true, given his bumpy road to the majors.
Pitching in different roles “doesn’t really bother me,” he said. “I try to keep the same mentality regardless. Like if I’m starting or coming in the fifth inning, fourth inning, whatever it is, trying to throw strikes and get quick outs and stay out there as long as Mendy needs me.”
That, too, stems from his past.
Myers was in the Rays’ minor-league system when the big-league club’s pitching staff was devastated by injuries. It was 2018 and manager Kevin Cash was short on options — one “TBA” after another on his list of probable pitchers.
“Coming up with Tampa, they were one of the first ones who started using an opener, so it never really affected me,” Myers said. “Tampa tried it with me a few times and I never really tried to do too much. If I’m physically able to go, I can pitch at any time.”
He’s proved that every step of the way, with Friday’s save being a particularly good example. High-leverage situations don’t seem to faze him much. Nor do low-leverage ones. Nor do medium-leverage ones, for that matter.
“I’m just trying to get three outs as quickly as I can,” he said. “I try not to think too much about it.”
But did he get that extra boost? That adrenaline rush that career closers talk about?
“Maybe?” he said with a verbal shrug. “I think I have to do it a little bit more to feel it out.”
Given all the ways he’s been used, that might not even be out of the question.
Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.
