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Is Jake Meyers for Real?

What's the greatest honor a player can win?  For Jose Altuve, it was the American League MVP Award. For Zack Greinke, it was the Cy Young Award.  And earlier today for Jake Meyers, it was the YouTube MVP award, given to the player of the game as voted on by fans watching the broadcast on YouTube. Meyers went 2 for 5, but his hard hit ball off of Royals reliever Joel Payamps brought home Alex Bregman for the walk-off 10th inning win. 

Jake Meyers and His YouTube MVP Award.
Meyers's good game today was not a fluke. He his now slashing .316/.344/.526 in 61 plate appearances since being called up from Sugar Land on August 1. 

The Astros traded Myles Straw for Phil Maton because James Click thought that the combination of Chas McCormick and Meyers would produce as well as the combination of Straw and McCormick. So far, that component of the trade has worked as planned. Meyers has hit well, and McCormick has slashed  .333/.379/.467 in 66 plate appearances this month. The Kyle Tucker detour to the COVID IL forced both rookie outfielders into the lineup for a week, and they both held their own.

But McCormick suffered a hand injury, and after carrying him for a couple of days as a defensive replacement who couldn't bat, the Astros bowed to reality and placed McCormick on the IL. This will put Meyers in the starting lineup in centerfield for 10,days. 

Or for more than 10 days. In an article headlined "Chas McCormick’s absence could lead to Jake Meyers seizing the Astros’ starting center-fielder job," Jake Kaplan discusses the fact that "Meyer's performance has only offered more evidence that his offensive improvements are real...He's already hit a bunch of balls hard." He also notes that "Meyers is probably the best center-field defender in the Astros organization."

So is Jake Meyers ready to take over in centerfield on a day-to-day basis?  Here, I'll take a deep dive into the data on Meyers (as thin as it is) to try to answer this question. 

Reasons for Optimism

Jake Meyers does indeed hit the ball hard. Fernando Tatis hits the ball hard. Shohei Ohtani hits the ball hard. Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton, Vlad Guerrero, Juan Soto, and Salvador Perez all hit the ball hard. These men are 4th through 10th in hard hit % in the majors this year. Jake Meyers is ahead of all of them. Through Tuesday's game, Meyers has hit the ball hard (more than 95 MPH) in 57.1% of all the balls he has put in play. That's 3rd best in baseball this season (minimum 25 "batted ball events") behind only Evan Longoria and Byron Buxton.

His "expected" batting numbers are very good. So far, Meyers has an expected batting average of .267 and an expected slugging percentage of .492. As a result, his expected wOBA is .342. While the expected batting average and slugging numbers are less than their actual numbers (.308 for BA; .538 for SLG), the expected numbers are intrinsically good. They show, as Kaplan noted, that Meyers has leveled up as an offensive player. 

Reasons for Pessimism

His BABIP is unsustainably high. Entering play today, Meyers had a batting average on balls in play of .406. He hit two singles today, so that percentage only went up. The league average is .292. BABIPs tend to cluster around that number, so it is likely that Meyers has hit with good luck so far this season. That his expected numbers, which account for how hard he hits the ball, are high indicates that some of the high BABIP will likely remain. But it can't stay that high. 

His strike zone judgment is poor. Meyers has walked only twice in an Astros uniform, while he has struck out 19 times. Among Astros, his 31.1% strikeout rate is surpassed only by Robel Garcia, Jason Castro, and several pitchers in interleague games. His 3.3 walk rate is the lowest of any Astro position player. It is likely that both numbers will improve with more playing time, but projections show that Meyers will walk only occasionally while striking out frequently. For example, the Depth Charts projection system says he will walk in 6.5% of his plate appearances while punching out in 25.4% of them. These would be the worst marks on the team of any regular. 

Conclusions

There is reason for both optimism and pessimism about Jake Meyers' potential to be a regular. His hard hitting ways have allowed him to get more base hits than we'd expect, and to drive in runs when he hits it too hard for a pitcher to field cleanly like in the bottom of the 10th today. He will not keep hitting .300, but he can make offensive contributions.

I worry greatly about the strike zone judgment. Strikeout and walk rates that poor portend a more pedestrian future than we've seen from Meyers so far. That is the issue I will be paying attention to as I watch Meyers this week with McCormick on the IL. Can he walk more?  Can he strike out less? 

His ability to make contact today led to 2 base hits on balls that were not hard hit, and the winning grounder. Here's to hoping the Jake Meyers we saw today is the Jake Meyers we keep seeing. We can even give him more YouTube MVP awards if that's what it takes. 

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