The Optimist's Case for Jake Meyers

Jake Meyers had a disappointing 2022. But his excellent center field defense, healthy shoulder, and AAA numbers from last season indicate he will be a productive player in 2023.

Jake Meyers had an excellent 2021, earning a major league call-up with a .343/.408/.598 slash line at Sugar Land. After his promotion up US-59, he had a slash line of .260/.323/.438 in 163 major league plate appearances. Meyers’ performance won him starts in 3 of 4 of the Astros ALDS games against the White Sox.

And then it all came crashing down. Or crashing sideways in this case. In Game 4 of that series, Meyers tore his labrum crashing into the fence in Chicago. The injury required surgery shortly after the 2021 World Series.

Meyers began 2022 on the injured list. And when Meyers returned to the majors in the summer, he hit nowhere as well as he did in 2021. His 2022 slash line was .227/.269/.313. His OPS+, which was 107 in 2021 plunged to 66 in 2022. He went from 7% better than the average major league hitter to 34 percent worse than average.

Ouch.

In August, the Astros sent Meyers back to Sugar Land, where he stayed for nearly all of the rest of the season.

Jake Meyers’ 2022 season was seen my most Astros fans as a disaster, and understandably so. But in this article, I will make an optimistic case for Jake Meyers. He was not as bad as you thought in 2022 and there is good reason to think he will play better in 2023 and be a contributor for the Astros.

Great Defense Provides a High Floor

Meyers obviously regressed greatly at the plate in 2022. Despite that, numbers still showed him to be better than a replacement player in 2022. Baseball Reference calculated that Meyers was 0.5 runs better than a replacement player; Fangraphs calculated he was 0.3 runs better.

Meyers’ offense was obviously substandard, but his defense was outstanding. The chart below shows the fielding metrics for Meyers from three different measures of individual defense.

By Defensive Runs Saved, Meyers ranked as 15th best among Major League centerfielders in 2022. By Outs Above Average, he ranked 10th and by Fielding Runs Above Average, he ranked 8th. But notably, Meyers achieved these strong defensive numbers in relatively few innings. He had the 41st most defensive innings in the majors in 2022.

Meyers was keeping runs off the board at the plate and in the field at nearly equal levels. That doesn’t make watching any of Meyers’ at bats from 2022 any easier. But Meyers’ excellent defense indicates that he has a high floor as a player. He has at least one valuable skill at the major league level. The question is can he add others.

Jake Meyers had a terrible 2022, but he was on the roster for the ALDS. He pinch ran in the 9th inning of Game 1, scoring on the Yordan Alvarez walk off home run.

Reduced Power in 2022

What Was Different for Jake Meyers in 2022? He didn’t hit the ball hard.

The chart below shows a variety of Statcast metrics for Meyers in 2021 and 2022. Each is a different measure of power, and each shows a clear decline in 2022. Meyers hit the ball with lower exit velocities and barreled the ball less often. As a result, his expected slugging percentage declined from .426 to .292.

Probably the easiest way to see the decline in Meyers ability to hit the ball hard is in the xwOBACON. This stands for expected weighted on base average on contact. But it’s more fun to call it Whoa Bacon!¹ This number shows that when Meyers hit the ball in 2022, he was likely to get on base 35.1% of the time, down from 43.2% in 2021.

In conclusion, Meyers didn’t hit the ball as hard in 2022.

One alternate explanation for Meyers’ slump in 2022 was that he was striking out more than he had before. I also examined Statcast metrics on Meyers’ swing decisions and those numbers are shown in the table below.

There are signs of decline here for Meyers, but these seem to me more gradual than those in the power column. I have included a column here for the MLB Average to show that on many of these measures, Meyers’ decline is from slightly above the MLB average to slightly below it (c.f. his Zone Swing %, which went from 67.5% in 2021 to 65.7 in 2022, compared to the MLB average of 66.9%).

The numbers do show that Meyers is a high strikeout, low walk player. He made less contact than the average player, as seen by his Chase Contact rate (well below MLB average in both seasons) and his elevated whiff rates.

Meyers’ decline in these areas are still worrisome since his natural high strikeout and low walk rates give him little margin for error. But the numbers here indicate to me that Meyers’ swing decisions and propensity to strike out a lot were not his biggest issue in 2022.

A Healthier Meyers

There are two reasons to think that Meyers will play better in 2023 than he did in 2022. The first is the most obvious reason: health.

Meyers was on the IL for the first two-and-a-half months of the 2022 season recovering from his shoulder injury. And when Meyers returned, he never looked fully healthy. The fact that he didn’t hit the ball as hard when he returned to the majors is supportive evidence of the hypothesis that Meyers’ shoulder was not 100 percent when he played in the majors.

As he reported to camp this year, Meyers said he was “A lot healthier and I’m feeling great.” According the Brian McTaggart, “Even in his first few at-bats in the spring, Meyers is swinging with more confidence and pulling the ball more.”

But he also told Chandler Rome that “I have no clue how to tell how much of (the injury) impacted what, because the game of baseball is tough.” So we cannot say for sure that Meyers’ shoulder was the issue last year. But there is reason to believe that his shoulder was the issue last season and will not be one this season.

Meyers Broke Out of His Slump Last Year…in AAA

The other reason to believe that Meyers will play better in 2023 is that he got out of his slump in 2022—just at the AAA level. At Sugar Land, Meyers had a slash line of .306/.406/.507. And he increases his walk rate to 14.7% and decreased his strikeout rate to 17.6%.

The strikeout and walk rates indicate that Meyers better numbers are not just a function of a few more balls falling in, but a better set of swing decisions by Meyers. Whatever issues Meyers had in the majors did not carry over to his performance in Sugar Land.

As a result, projection systems show that Meyers is likely to be a productive season in 2023. For example, the ATC projection is that Meyers will have a slash line of .240/.301/.373 for a wRC+ of 93. Most projections give him low levels of plate appearances, but the one that gives him the most plate appearances (ZIPS has him for 416 plate appearances) projects Meyers for 2.0 fWAR. That is the WAR level of a league average player.

That’s not the performance of a star player, but a Jake Meyers who is a slightly below average major league hitter and an above average defensive center fielder is a productive player who will help the Astros in 2023 and hopefully beyond.

And Meyers will play in 2023. He is currently in an open competition with Chas McCormick for the center field job. But with the potential that Michael Brantley will miss opening day with his own shoulder injury and the near guarantee that baseball players get hurt, Meyers is likely to play a good bit this season.

This is worrisome to Astro fans who watched Meyers in 2022. But between his outstanding defense, his healthy shoulder, and his bounce back at AAA last season, there is every reason to believe he will play well this season.

1. Seriously, who doesn’t like bacon. Both as a concept and as a food product.