Pat Murphy provided the Milwaukee Brewers with shirts at their lockers when they arrived to American Family Field on Wednesday afternoon.

In yellow lettering of the same font of their game jerseys, 'Undaunted' is what the shirts read.

With them, in each player's locker, was a placard.

"Not intimidated or discouraged by difficulty, danger or disappointment," it said.

"It’s a dictionary thing, I think," Murphy said.

In a team meeting roughly four hours before first pitch against the Pittsburgh Pirates, the word was the theme of Murphy's open-table discussion with the team.

"I just think it’s a great word to describe how to react to things when you’re disappointed or don’t get what you want," he said. "Remain undaunted."

There was no better person to have on the mound, then, that night than Tobias Myers.

The 25-year-old right-hander's career has featured plenty of difficulty, danger and discouragement. He hasn't yielded to any of it.

Myers delivered arguably the best start of his young career, one that is blossoming into unexpected colors this season, carving the Pirates up for eight shutout innings as part of a 9-0 win.

Myers struck out six but more importantly allowed only four hits and one walk. He was in command from the jump, both in demeanor and his pinpoint accuracy.

Last year on this date, Myers had a 5.85 earned run average — at Class AA. He was coming off a year in which he had been designated for assignment three times. It was his eighth season in the pros and he seemingly could only find brick walls at every turn.

Even this season, Myers was part of the second group of cuts on the big-league side of Milwaukee's spring training. He headed to Class AAA Nashville to begin the season, not on the 40-man roster and seemingly buried behind a deep group of starters on the depth chart.

"This kid had no thought he was going to pitch for the Milwaukee Brewers this year," Murphy said. "He might’ve. But if he’s being honest with himself, he was one of the first guys out of spring training."

Yet, there he was on the mound against the Pirates, becoming the first Brewers rookie in more than a decade to have multiple outings of at least eight scoreless innings. The last to do it before Myers was Wily Peralta in 2013. It's something that's been done only three times since Teddy Higuera in 1985.

On a team full of surprise performances and electric rookies, Myers stands outs in both areas.

"For me it means continue to do what I’ve been doing and that’s just taking it one pitch at a time, one day at at time, not looking too far ahead," he said. "As simple as competing as much as I can every single time I’m out there and giving the team all I have."

With the performance, Myers lowered his earned run average to 3.13, nearly three whole points lower than what it was a year ago while bussing to ballparks around Biloxi, Mississippi and the surrounding Gulf Coast region.

More importantly, Milwaukee extended its division lead by a game and a half Wednesday as the St. Louis Cardinals dropping both ends of a doubleheader.

Tobias Myers' command carves up Pittsburgh

The groundwork for Myers' latest gem was laid on a swivel chair in the stuffy visitor's clubhouse in Chicago.

There, Brewers pitching coach Chris Hook sat Myers down following a rather treacherous performance from the rookie in only his third major-league start. Myers walked four, allowed four runs and couldn't pitch into the fourth innings on a blustery afternoon at Wrigley Field.

Hook showed Myers video of what his mechanics looked like from outings when his fastball velocity was sitting in the mid-90s. There was a position in those videos Myers was getting to with his body, one of balance and power, right as he began his motion down the hill. Myers had gotten away from that in recent outings, as well as, Hook pointed out, moving too quickly to get his front leg to the top of its lift.

The result was Myers hyperextending ever so slightly with his back leg, a bad habit he fell into in 2022 after being traded to the Cleveland Guardians.

On Wednesday, each of Myers' strikeouts came with Pirates batters looking at a fastball painted precisely on the outside corner.

That type of command is a far cry from what he showed earlier on in the season.

"In today’s game, that word 'command' is not used nearly as much. It used to be a steeple of the game in terms of you have to pitch with command. The great ones do. With the stuff getting so great that the zone seemingly being bigger, you get away without having it. This kid tonight, with (catcher) William (Contreras') guidance was very very good. Commanding the baseball is an ingredient of his that he has to do."

Earlier this year, Myers struggled to either consistently find the zone or consistently locate within the zone. The former led to walks. The latter was arguably worse, with succulent fastballs and cutters left over the heart of the plate.

But Myers turned a corner once the calendar flipped to June. With help from Hook, he found more consistency and fluidity with his mechanics but, just as importantly, he also gained a tempo and rhythm on the mound that was fueled by an underlying confidence.

That is now showing itself in different ways.

Against the Angels in mid-June, Myers felt early on the hitters weren’t picking up the way his fastball and cutter were playing off one another and threw them at will to a result of 6 1/3 scoreless.

In his most recent time out, at Colorado, the air at elevation was rendering his cutter useless and he gave up three early runs, so after off finding the feel for his slider while facing the Rockies’ Ezequiel Tovar in the third inning he began ripping off one after another and ultimately turned in a strong start.

This time, Myers found a groove by attacking the outside corner relentlessly. Myers’ first punch out came against Ke’Bryan Hayes on a 94.2 mph four-seamer that caught the outside edge – or so home plate umpire Clint Vondrak at least pronounced.

With the outer edge open for business and pinpoint command allowing him to attack at with aplomb, Myers kept at it.

As a result, he was able to get ahead in counts and puts batters away looking when they weren’t willing to pull the trigger on a swing and get weak contact when they were; of the Pirates’ 21 balls in play against Myers on the night, 15 had an expected batting average below .200.

"Certain hitters, that’s kind of where we wanted to go," Myers said. "William just did a good job of noticing that and I was able to repeat that pitch pretty often, so we kept attacking it."

Bats offer plenty of support

Over the weekend, William Contreras recorded the hardest-hit ball by any Brewers player in the Statcast era (since 2015) with a 118.1 mph double in Los Angeles.

He almost matched it a few days later.

Contreras blasted a 117.4 mph double off the base of the wall in left to plate two runs in the bottom of the fourth to put the Brewers up, 4-0. The Brewers catcher turned on a 2-0 sinker on the inner half from Pirates starter Martin Perez and managed to somehow keep it fair down the line.

Contreras now owns two of the top three hardest-hit balls by the Brewers in the last decade. The record holder up until Contreras' swing last weekend was a 117.9 mph line-drive double by Christian Yelich in 2019.

Contreras' missile added insurance after a pair of two-out runs in the first.

In the opening frame, Christian Yelich legged out an infield single and scored when Willy Adames split the right-center gap with a double to the base of the fence. Sal Frelick followed by punching a single to left, the exact type of approach the Brewers need to see from the second-year outfielder.

Meanwhile, Rhys Hoskins is still working through the tail end of a funk at the plate, but the damage he's doing is all loud. Hoskins recorded just the fourth hit of the month with a swing in the fifth inning Wednesday, but each one has gone for extra bases.

This one was Hoskins' third homer in that stretch, a solo blast way up the bleachers in left to push Milwaukee's lead to 5-0.

After Andruw Monasterio drove in Sal Frelick -- who went 3 for 4 with a double, triple and walk -- with two outs in the sixth, a Willy Adames three-run shot pushed the Brewers' lead to 9-0 in the eighth.

Myers' ascension is one of the Brewers' top stories

Prior to a long eighth inning, Murphy had every intention of letting Myers try to finish off a shutout in the ninth inning.

A handful of lengthy at-bats brought an end to that idea, but added no sourness to a spectacular outing from a spectacular story.

With the Brewers' rotation decimated by injuries, Myers has been thrust into action and delivered. He now leads all of Milwaukee's starters in ERA and has now held opponents to one or no runs in seven of his last 10 starts.

"I don't think any of us are surprised anymore," Frelick said. "He's been doing it the past few starts. You know what you're going to get when you roll him out there – he's going to attack the zone, and that's why he can go so deep into games. He just attacks the zone and guys are putting a lot of early contact in play and he's letting his defense play behind him. I think that's what makes him so good and effective. It's really fun to play behind a guy like that."

Myers has shown an ability to beat teams in a variety of different ways. The slider. Four-seamers up. Changeups down to lefties. Command.

On more than one occasion, he's put all of it together, too.

"It was one of those nights weather I felt like I had pretty much everything going," Myers said.

All of it from a rookie who, by the book, isn't supposed to be doing this.

Undaunted, indeed.

Brewers schedule

Brewers vs. Pirates, 1:10 p.m. Thursday. Milwaukee RHP Aaron Civale (2-6, 5.18) vs. RHP Paul Skenes (5-0, 2.12). Broadcasts: TV – Bally Sports Wisconsin. Radio – AM-620.

Brewers vs. Nationals, 7:10 p.m. Friday. Milwaukee RHP Freddy Peralta (6-4, 3.95) vs. Washington TBA. Broadcasts: TV – Bally Sports Wisconsin. Radio – AM-620.

Brewers vs. Nationals, 3:10 p.m. Saturday. Milwaukee LHP Dallas Keuchel (0-0, 4.61) vs. Washington TBA. Broadcasts: TV – Bally Sports Wisconsin. Radio – AM-620.

Brewers vs. Nationals, 1:10 p.m. Sunday. Milwaukee RHP Colin Rea (8-3, 3.81) vs. Washington TBA. Broadcasts: TV – Bally Sports Wisconsin. Radio – AM-620.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Brewers 9, Pirates 0: Tobias Myers delivers another gem