Red Wings at IronPigs: Alex Meyer

Twins Video

I had the opportunity to watch the Rochester Red Wings' last 3 games (the double header last night and this afternoon's game) in my back yard against the Lehigh Valley IronPigs over the weekend. My list of must-dos were to see whether Alex Meyer was as good as he was this spring, in real game situations and to see what Eduardo Nunez was all about. Happily to say, I have done that and more and I am ready to share.

Speaking about sharing, on the first leg of the doubleheader last night, the IronPigs wore their new bacon uniforms, so here is a shot of them.

If you look closely, the bacon strip on the hat spells "IronPigs" in a Salvador Dali-like script.

Back to the Twins: Little known fact, but Alex Meyer is doing a variety of resistance exercises on his shoulder for a good 20 minutes before he goes to the pen to warm up.

I guess that loosens the shoulder

In this game Meyer showed why he is the

Twins' number 3 overall prospect and the Twins' top prospect who is playing the game right now. His fastball sat all night between 94 and 96 mph, touching as high as 97 and as low as 92, and was a ball he threw all over the zone. Inside and out and up and down. If being a batter trying to catch up to a 97 mph inside FB after swinging at a 94 mph outside FB was not enough, Meyer's best pitch is not his fastball that has a wicked downward motion and it is very hard to lift. Arguably, his fastball is his third best pitch. He is using his FB to set up a knee buckling high 70s curve (his best pitch by far) and a low to mid 80s changeup with a tailing motion. These two are his out pitches. He also has a slurvy slider in mid to upper 80s, which is an average pitch at this point. So we are talking about a repertoire of 3 plus pitches (with at least the curve being plus plus) and an average and improving pitch. All a batter can do at this point is to put the bat down in the zone and pray contact is made and there is a bloop or an error on the other end. And that was what happened yesterday. A couple of bloops, a couple errors by Deibinson Romero and a couple soft singles down the middle amidst a bunch of broken bats, soft grounders and strikeouts.

Here are pictorials on the velocities that Meyer operates within (radar readings upper right corner) :

Those were: Fastball, Slider, Change up, Curve, Curve. And his fastest fastball clocked at 97, while his slowest curve at 78. This is a good 20 mph or so range and he held that range throughout the game.

By far, he has the best stuff in the Twins' organization and definitely top of the rotation potential.

Originally published at The Tenth Inning Stretch

Next: Eduardo Nunez.

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