Is Tampa Bay Rays outfielder Austin Meadows a fit for the Colorado Rockies?

The Tampa Bay Rays have always been a team that trades for or drafts talented players just to get a few years of service time out of them before trading them. One of the players that they could look to trade once the lockout mercifully ends is outfielder Austin Meadows and, as Colorado Rockies fans well know, they desperately need some help in the outfield and offensively.

That’s why Mike Axisa of CBS Sports recently suggested that the Rockies could use Meadows since he would address their outfield needs.

However, he’s not a perfect fit for the Rockies.

Tampa Bay Rays outfielder Austin Meadows isn’t a perfect fit for the Colorado Rockies

While he would undoubtedly address some issues for the Colorado Rockies, Tampa Bay Rays outfielder Austin Meadows is a good, but not a great fit for the team.

In 2021, Meadows played in 142 games for the Rays and he hit .234/.315/.458. Immediately, from that slash line, you can see that the average and on-base percentage are not great but the slugging percentage is good. That’s because he had 29 doubles, 27 homers, and 106 RBI.

That slugging percentage would have been fifth-best of qualifiers on the Rockies, between Elias Díaz’s .464 and Ryan McMahon’s .449. However, his 117 OPS+ would have second on the Rockies only to first baseman C.J. Cron, who was teammates with Meadows late in the 2018 season.

He struggled on all fronts in 2020 as he hit just .205/.296/.371 with an OPS+ of 87 but his best season came in 2019.

Meadows played in 138 games and he had 29 doubles, 33 homers, 89 RBI, a .291/.364/.558 slash line, and an OPS+ of 144. He was an All-Star and came in 14th in AL MVP voting.

The last time the Rockies had an everyday player with an OPS+ of 140 or better was in 2017 when Charlie Blackmon had a 141 OPS+ but the last time the Rockies had an offensive player play in more than 125 games and have an OPS+ of 144 or higher was when Matt Holliday had an OPS+ of 151 in 2007.

The problem with that is that prior to 2019, Meadows never had a season with more than 18 homers in the minors, and in 2019, the ball was juiced (despite MLB’s investigation into themselves saying that it wasn’t the case).

Additionally, Meadows is a below-average outfielder in left field in Tampa Bay. That’s part of the reason why he was a DH for more than 42 percent of his games in 2021.

In other words, it stands to reason that he would be worse in left field for the Rockies since Coors Field’s outfield is much bigger than Tampa Bay’s. The Rockies don’t want an everyday DH and they already have a below-average outfielder in right field in Charlie Blackmon, who will be 36 in July.

He would also be yet another left-handed bat in a lineup that has a lot of them. The Rockies lineup could include Ryan McMahon, Charlie Blackmon, Sam Hilliard, Raimel Tapia, and Dom Nuñez.

So will Meadows be able to recreate his 2019 season? If the Rockies think that he can, he would definitely be worth trading for (if the price is right, of course). But otherwise, the Rockies should still consider him but they should have some other free agents and trade targets that should be ahead of Austin Meadows when the lockout ends.