West Virginia Power outfielder Austin Meadows. Photo by Chris Dorst/ The Charleston Gazette
USA TODAY has been recognizing the nation’s top high school athletes for more than 30 years. As we prepare to announce the 2015 American Family Insurance ALL-USA Baseball Team next summer, we’ll dig into the archives and check in with ALL-USA honorees from the past three decades. Today, we’re catching up with Pittsburgh Pirates center fielder prospect Austin Meadows, who finished this past season with the Class A West Virginia Power of the South Atlantic League and was an ALL-USA first-team outfielder from Grayson (Loganville, Ga.) in 2013.
Austin Meadows’ offseason was a little longer than he would have liked, but once he began playing, he made up for lost time.
Meadows, who was the No. 9 pick in the 2013 draft, injured his hamstring in spring training this year and didn’t play his first game until June 30 because of the injury. The 19-year-old hit .278 in a seven-game stint in rookie ball, then went 1-for-8 in his first two games with the West Virginia (Charleston, W.Va.) Power of the Class A South Atlantic League.
“Hitting-wise, facing those guys at first, I was struggling,” Meadows said. “I had not seen that type of pitching talent. Once I started getting in the games, I started getting a real good feel of it, playing every single game.”
In his third game with the Power, he went 3-for-5 and was on his way. He finished the season on an 11-game hitting streak, batting a team-leading .322 with and was second on the team with a .486 slugging percentage.
MORE: American Family Insurance ALL-USA Homepage
“I am very happy how my season turned out and looking forward to next year,” Meadows said. “I am glad the Pirates were patient with my injury.”
Though the hamstring injury was frustrating, it may have been a blessing in disguise.
Meadows was an ALL-USA first-team outfielder at Grayson (Loganville, Ga.) in 2013.
“I talked with my hitting coach while I was down there and he talked about going for some of those good outside pitches and driving them into gaps, plus going with the inside pitch,” Meadows said. “I couldn’t do field work, so mainly, I just hit every day.”
MORE: Meadows hits his first homer this season
While the Pirates would have liked to see Meadows stay healthy over the whole season, they were pleased with his progress.
“I think he finished up on a great note,” said Larry Broadway, the Pirates’ director of minor league operations. “Our goal for any first-year player from high school or our Dominican Academy is to lay a foundation for professionalism, what it means to be a professional player, how they take care of their body. We missed some of that from a physical standpoint because he had a tweaked hamstring and it drug on. We wanted to get more foundational at-bats, but at the same token, he learned how to deal with his adversity, how to work on getting better every day and be challenged with staying in it. Then he went to West Virginia and closed up strong.”
Meadows’ path to being the Pittsburgh Pirates’ starting center fielder isn’t an easy one. The Pirates already have a 27-year-old four-time All-Star at the position in Andrew McCutcheon (who was an ALL-USA player at Fort Meade, Fla. in 2005), plus At 6-3 and 200 pounds, Meadows ultimately may grow to be too big for the position.
“If his speed doesn’t go away, he’ll be a center fielder,” Power manager Michael Ryan told the Charleston Gazette. “He has the ability to play the corners too in case your center fielder in the big leagues is locked up for the next 10 years. He’s got a strong arm, very accurate. He’s got super power to all fields, a good downward path through the ball, good balance at the plate – just a recipe for a guy who can hit in the middle of the order.”
The left-handed hitting Meadows showed preternatural patience at the plate for a young player, striking out only 33 times in 164 at-bats this season while walking 19 times. He hit only .190 against lefties, but was .375 against right-handers.
“I don’t take a whole lot of stock into his not being better against left-handers,” Broadway said. “As a young guy, playing in a league that is dominated by guys who are out of college, he had not seen a lot of left-handers before with good stuff. He’s going to learn through that. There’s no red flags because the number of bats against a left-hander was so small anyway.”
Meadows wasn’t drafted for his power as much as he was for his hitting and his speed. However, he has 10 homers in 341 at-bats over two seasons.
“I’m trying to be aggressive at the plate,” Meadows said. “I feel like I adjusted pretty well to the next level.”
“There’s going to be power there,” Broadway said. “That will be the last thing that comes. His ability to make consistent contact will translate into power.”