After another excellent outing since his return from the Minors, Brett Myers is finally turning around his season. As you have no doubt read by now, he’s posted a 1.94 ERA over 41.2 innings in 6 starts since spending a couple of weeks down on the farm. Let’s look deeper to find out if his success should continue or if he will fall back into his early season troubles.

To go along with the sparkling ERA since his return, Myers is sporting a 30/10 K/BB ratio, which is solid, but only a 6.5 K/9. The improved control is nice to see, but the strikeout rate is a far cry from the 8.5 K/9 or so he’s typically put up as a starter. However, he’s had a 23/4 K/BB ratio in 23.2 innings over his last 3 starts, which is much closer to what you’d expect. Of course, that includes starts against the Bay and Nady-less Pirates, the Dodgers, and the Nationals’ sad excuse of an offense.

Before Myers’ demotion, a major reason for his inflated ERA was his ridiculous HR/F. In the last HR/F Leaders & Laggards article before Myers’ return, he was leading baseball with a 20.2% rate. All season we contended that this had to come down, and sure enough, it’s now at 17%. This number is still well above the league average, but at least Myers has been close to this before, at 16.8%, and has a career rate of 15.2%, which is probably somewhat a function of the ballpark. Regression here might continue, but it shouldn’t be expected, and his other luck metrics look normal, so it’s just a matter of improving his full season skill-set for his ERA to keep dropping.

The last thing I wanted to mention was Myers’ lost velocity. All season, reports have mentioned that he had been consistently throwing his fastball in the high 80’s, basically peaking around 90, and the data confirmed these reports. In years past he would typically work in the low 90’s and peak in the mid 90’s, so this was a major concern and a possible explanation for the inflated HR/F. Let’s take a look at how his velocity has been since his return:

 
With the exception of last night’s game, Myers’ average and max fastball velocity has generally risen with each outing. When he last worked as a starter for a full season in ‘05 and ‘06, his average fastball velocity was 91.4, right in line with what’s he’s been averaging his last 6 starts. This is a clear improvement from earlier in the year when he was struggling to reach 90, and being able to watch him now with the Extra Innings package, I could see that he is throwing 92 and 93 MPH regularly. This really is a great sign and when you combine it with improved control and a more typical Myers strikeout rate over his last 3 outings, it appears that he’s now back to performing like the top 20 starter I thought he’d be before the season began.

I see no reason to expect the early season awfulness to crop up again, unless of course you subscribe to the “he’s a hothead”, “he has a million dollar arm, but 10 cent head”, or “he’s immature” line of rhetoric which ignores all the facts and takes the lazy approach to player analysis. So has the good Brett Myers returned? Yes folks, yes he has.

Questions, comments, criticisms, praise, expert league invitations? Email me at FBGeneralsMike@gmail.com.