Parker Meadows: Statcast edition

Parker Meadows is next up in my series. If you haven’t already, you can read about Dillon Dingler (https://tigersmlreport.com/2022/12/30/dillon-dingler-statcast-edition/) and Gage Workman (https://tigersmlreport.com/2022/11/27/gage-workman-statcast-edition/).

Season stats and quick overview

Parker Meadows
2022 AFL season stats: 76 PA, .224/.303/.433, 3 HRs, 7BB:16K, .735 OPS, average age with rest of league

Parker Meadows has gained many fans since he started his 2022 season, myself included from what I wrote about his swing changes (https://tigersmlreport.com/2022/10/14/parker-meadows-on-the-upswing/). Statistically, Parker didn’t have an AFL season to match his 2022 Erie campaign, but he shouldn’t be upset by what he produced. He posted a walk rate once again north of 10% and put plenty of balls into play.

Batted Balls

With an average launch angle of 20.9°, an average exit velocity of 86.4 MPH, he has given us lots of reasons why we should be excited. 

Six of his 26 BIP, or 23.1%, were hard hit. The solid contact is perhaps something that we should come to expect from Meadows. And as his average launch angle suggests, he also did a great job of lifting the ball. Launch angles 7° – 32° each have a wOBA north of .500. Parker Meadows had seven such balls with three of them at or above 100 MPH.

And just as wonderful was him using all sides of the field, whether in hits:

Or outs:

Plate discipline

He also was able to keep his discipline in check — five of his 39 PA ended with a ball far outside of the zone; four of which were walks. 

But let’s look at this plot here that shows all pitches Meadows saw:

Specifically I want to look at the 30 pitches he saw in the heart of the plate. 12 PA ending on pitches in the heart of the plate. Two on Ks (one on a changeup, the other a fastball), six resulted in outs, and four resulted in hits. That would mean Meadows put 40% of the balls in play with a .333 batting average. For comparisons sake: MLB averaged 32.8% out into play, batting average of .304 in 2022. 

Continuing to look at this plot, it’s great to see so many pitches outside being called balls. 37 of the 52 pitches that were not borderline were called balls and only 5 were swing and misses. Including the borderline, he had a 19.1% O-swing% — again far below MLB average. 

Conclusion

In all I really liked what I saw from the stats for Meadows. The overall stat line might not be all that impressive, but the discipline, the launch angles, and the exit velocities really help to add to the excitement that he gave us for the 2022 season. Hopefully he is able to continue to build upon it in Toledo and we get to see him make his debut in the near future.