Posted by Bill Baer on Friday, April 10, 2009 at 7:12 am

Brett Myers is an enigma. At times, he has Cy Young-quality stuff and other times, he ain’t fit to hold Adam Eaton’s cup. That was never more evident than last year, when he posted a 5.84 ERA in the first half before getting sent down to AAA, a demotion to which he gave his consent. After returning to the big leagues, he posted a 3.06 second half ERA and significantly decreased his walks and home runs allowed.

Oddly enough, right-handed hitters hit him harder last year than lefties, but this wasn’t the case on Opening Night when he faced the lefty-heavy Atlanta Braves lineup. Brian McCann hit a two-out, two-run home run in the first inning and Jordan Schafer hit his first career home run off of him in the second inning.

That got me wondering: what does he do differently when he succeeds as opposed to when he gets hit around like a pinata? I compared one of his more successful starts from last season — September 5 against the New York Mets — with his Opening Night start.

First the pitch location charts. The first is his start against the Mets, the second is from the Braves game.

The strike zone, which you are looking at from the catcher’s perspective behind home plate, stretches from about -1 to 1 on the X-axis and from about 1.5 to 3.5 on the Y-axis.

There doesn’t appear to be any discernible difference in pitch location with Myers as it pertains to lefties or righties.

Next, the platoon pitch breakdowns, starting with the Mets game from last year.

In his start last year, he used his fastball and curveball a lot more, both to lefties and to righties. His start against the Braves saw him rely a lot on his slider.

When they made contact, how did the hitters fare against Myers’ pitches?

Braves’ righties slugged .800 on his fastball in five at-bats and lefties slugged 1.400 on his change-up in five at-bats. A change-up from a right-handed pitcher is normally effective because it fades away from the hitter.

Did Myers’ change-up fade more against Mets hitters? He threw 15 in the Mets game and 10 in the Braves game. Let’s take a look at them.

Again, this is from the catcher’s perspective. Myers’ change-up was hittable, it appears, because it was getting too much vertical movement; he was leaving it up.

What about Myers’ fastball? We saw that Braves hitters slugged 1.333 on his fastball while Mets hitters slugged .444, so what was so different about it?

Despite being about 1 MPH faster on average and achieving more break both horizontally and vertically, it clearly wasn’t as effective. Location?

If you’re counting, Myers had 12 of 38 fastballs (31.5%) outside the strike zone against the Mets and 7 of 18 (39%) outside against the Braves. Oddly, it looks like Myers was in the middle of the zone a lot against the Mets and yet they performed worse against it, part of it likely due to variables not able to be controlled here (batter skill, pitch sequencing, etc.).

You hear it a lot from broadcasters and coaches, that a pitcher will lose confidence in his fastball but that appears to be the case with Myers. He had plenty of confidence in a slightly inferior fastball last year and felt comfortable throwing it in the strike zone. He has almost no confidence in a slightly better fastball this year. I noted as much in my April 6 article on the Opening Night game.

What’s even more baffling is that he has gone away from arguably his best pitch — his curveball. Of his 114 pitches against the Mets, 43 of them were curveballs (38%). Of his 93 pitches against the Braves, 18 of them were curveballs (19%). So he threw them twice as frequently against the Mets than he did against the Braves. Instead, Myers now relies on his slider.

While he never got burned with his slider on Sunday, Myers would be going away from a strength if he were to replace, so to speak, his curveball with his slider.

A summary of the differences that have been discussed:

• Myers has less confidence in his fastball
• He is relying more on his slider instead of his devastating curveball
• Location isn’t an issue except on his change-up, which he has been leaving up in the strike zone

Myers is slated to start the second game of the Phillies-Rockies series in Colorado, which opens tonight with Cole Hamels facing Jason Marquis. Myers will be opposed by Jorge De La Rosa. Stop by Crashburn Alley for my series preview.