2019 MLB Draft Guide Player Profile: Austin Meadows

Near last year’s trade deadline, the Pittsburgh Pirates acquired Chris Archer from the Tampa Bay Rays to further bolster the team’s rotation. For a player under team control for three years at time of deal, it was obviously going to take some good returning talent to make this deal happen. The Rays got that, and potentially more. Along with the hard-throwing Tyler Glasnow , the Rays received Austin Meadows , once viewed as Andrew McCutchen ’s successor in the Pittsburgh outfield for years to come. However, it never quite panned out. He missed time in 2016 and 2017 due to injury, which messed up his rhythm. Before being traded to the Rays, Meadows had five home runs, four stolen bases and a .292/.327/.468 slash line in 49 games for the Buccos. After the trade, he spent some time in the minors, before appearing in 10 games for the Rays, where he hit one home run, stole one base and hit .250 (.278 BABIP). 

Meadows is an intriguing  fantasy outfielder this season, as he has double-digit power and speed potential, but he has just 59 big league games under his belt, and he struggled a bit when coming to Tampa Bay. However, the upside is immense, and while some of the shine may have worn off, don’t forget that Meadows was a consensus top 10 prospect in all of baseball about a year or two ago.

Take a look at his numbers across the various levels of the minors, per Baseball Cube.

That’s a pretty solid track record there, hitting above .300 at every level except Triple-A, but even at the highest minor league level, that extra-base hit percentage over 42-percent is solid. When players that do have decent pop in the bat come up to the majors, they typically see their power numbers boosted a little bit. It’s not an exact science, but it seems to happen, and Meadows should be able to do that, so long as that ground ball rate stays at or below last year’s mark of 41.4-percent. His fly ball rate of 37 percent last year will certainly suffice, and a hard contact rate north of 37-percent will as well. For what it is worth, there were 40 qualified players with a fly ball rate and hard contact rate of at least 37-percent. The average number of home runs of those players came out to be just under 28 home runs. Meadows won’t hit that much, but with rates comparable to J.T. Realmuto and Chris Taylor , Meadows should be in the 16-21 range this season, assuming the Rays give him a full workload of at-bats.

To further validate that, through his first 59 big league games, he hits a home run every 29.67 at-bats. If the Rays give him 600 at-bats, this season, that comes out to 20.2 home runs. A 20-homer season is well in the range of outcomes for Meadows in 2019. If you extrapolate his first 59 games over a full season, here is his average stat line:

Meadows is a high-contact hitter and if he gets into a streak of playing to the long ball, that strikeout rate might creep up above 20-percent. However, his minor league track record indicates that he should reside closer to about 16 percent in that department. The 5.2-percent walk rate he posted last year is rather low, but the optimism there is that when he did join the Rays, he posted a 7.7-percent walk rate over those 10 games, and that mark is closer to where he was during his minor league career.

Here is a look at some of the projections for Meadows this season:

Meadows has the makings of a future 20/20 guy in the major leagues, but he probably doesn’t quite get there in 2019. He needs to play well to become a fixture in that Tampa Bay outfield, but as long as he focuses on making quality contact and plays to what he can do best, we’re looking at a guy who should hit close to .270-.275  with 15-20 home runs and 15 stolen bases.

Statistical Credits:
fangraphs.com
baseballsavant.mlb.com
thebaseballcube.com
THE BAT projections courtesy of Derek Carty
ATC Projections courtesy of Ariel Cohen
Steamer Projections courtesy of steamerprojections.com
ZiPS Projections Courtesy of Dan Szymborski