Parker Meadows tracked a 352-foot fly ball in the second inning Monday night at Comerica Park.
The 23-year-old center fielder, who received exactly 2,103 plate appearances over 491 games in the minor leagues, completed the catch and couldn’t help but smile. He pointed to his teammates in the outfield, right fielder Riley Greene and left fielder Akil Baddoo, after the first play of his MLB career.
“I gotta get used to that third deck up there,” Meadows said. “It carried a little bit on me, but we caught the ball.”
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Meadows, the No. 44 overall pick in the 2018 draft out of his Georgia high school, was thrown into the fire in his debut with the Detroit Tigers. There was the catch in the second inning, but after that, he was involved in almost all the big moments in the game.
It was a busy first day on the job.
“We’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” first baseman Spencer Torkelson said.
Meadows stepped to the plate five times in Monday’s 7-6 loss to the Chicago Cubs at Comerica Park. He notched his first hit, a two-strike single into right field, in the sixth inning. He struck out looking on a pitch outside the strike zone with the bases loaded in the eighth inning. He flew out to right field with a runner on first base to end the game.
Just 24 hours earlier, Meadows had been in the Triple-A Toledo clubhouse when Mud Hens manager Anthony Iapoce (assisted by his children) broke the news of the long-awaited promotion. His kids were at the ballpark for Sunday’s game and made the announcement to the entire team.
But Meadows couldn’t reach his parents.
“It’s kind of an older stadium,” Meadows said of Toledo’s Fifth Third Field. “The cell service isn’t very good. I was trying to call my parents. I was just scrambling around the whole clubhouse trying to find cell service.”
But folks outside the Mud Hens’ locker room, such as his parents, found out about the promotion when the Tigers posted an announcement on the social media now known as X (formerly Twitter).
“Unfortunately, they found out on Twitter before I called them,” Meadows said. “Blame the cell service there.”
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Family matters
By Monday evening, the Meadows family — anchored by father Kenny and mother Staci — sat in their seats at Comerica Park. His older brother, fellow Tigers outfielder Austin Meadows, was not seen in attendance, but the brothers talked on the phone before Monday’s game. The elder Meadows, a former All-Star with the Tampa Bay Rays, has been on the injured list with anxiety since April 7 and is unlikely to return to Detroit for the rest of the season.
The younger Meadows received 11 tickets for family and friends.
His fan section for Monday’s game was larger than that.
“My mom said it was hard for her to watch,” Meadows said. “She’s kind of a nervous wreck, but it was great to do that in front of them. It was really, really cool to see them after the game on the field and hang out with them and take pictures.”
After 113 games this season with Toledo, Meadows — who experienced a career breakthrough with High-A West Michigan and Double-A Erie last season — was finally making his MLB debut.
For the Mud Hens, Meadows hit .256 with 27 doubles, seven triples, 19 home runs, 57 walks (11% walk rate) and 123 strikeouts (23.8% strikeout rate), along with stealing 19 bases in 21 attempts and serving as the everyday center fielder. His defense and baserunning have been MLB-ready tools for a long time.
The Tigers, though, were waiting for everything to click on offense.
“Pretty popular prospect and somebody that the organization felt had some untapped potential,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said. “He slowly and surely chipped away at some of his early struggles in his career to develop into a nice player.”
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A click, finally
Questions about his production on offense — despite a standout 21-game spring training performance with a .317 batting average and team-high five home runs — surfaced again at the beginning of the 2023 season.
Meadows struggled for six weeks, hitting .229 with three home runs and a .698 OPS in his first 168 plate appearances with Triple-A Toledo, over 38 games from March 31-May 14. But after that? In his final 350 plate appearances, Meadows hit .271 with 16 homers and an .875 OPS over 76 games from May 16-Aug. 19.
“He’s always been a guy who can hit the ball out of the ballpark, especially to the pull side,” Tigers president of baseball operations Scott Harris said. “I think he’s done a better job in recent months of accessing that power. We challenged him to take a few more chances early in counts and to be a little bit more aggressive earlier in counts, but then be hyper-disciplined later in counts.
“It’s a really difficult balance to strike, but it was an important input into the decision. He’s done that in recent months, and we’ve seen a real spike in the power. We’ve also seen some better pitch selection out of him, which convinced us that he has a chance to really compete at this level.”
The opportunity to compete at the highest level in the world arrived Monday, and in the sixth inning, Meadows finally found success there, chasing Cubs right-hander Javier Assad from his start by ripping a 92.7 mph four-seam fastball into right field for a single.
The first hit of his MLB career had a 108.5 mph exit velocity.
“It felt great,” Meadows said, reflecting on what could be the first of many hits. “I felt like I was on top of the world. I looked at the big screen and saw my family and friends cheering. It was a pretty surreal moment.”
“I know the stress it is to get your first big-league knock,” said Torkelson, who didn’t get his first hit until the second game of his career. “It must be nice to get it in the first game. But you know, he’s a special player, so a lot more hits to come.”
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Fitting in, in the big moments
Meadows felt nervous before Monday’s game, but he didn’t appear uncomfortable at any point during his first game, even with the bases loaded in the eighth inning or with two outs and the potential tying run on base in the ninth inning.
He looked like he was ready for the big moments.
“It’s the same game,” Meadows said. “You try not to think about the situations. I mean, you’re obviously thinking about the situation, but with the bases loaded, you’re trying to keep it simple.”
The big hit in the big moments didn’t happen Monday, but those misses — including a missed call from home plate umpire Carlos Torres on the called-third strike in the eighth inning — didn’t take away from the enjoyment of the big night.
The ball Meadows caught in the second inning came off the bat of former National League MVP Cody Bellinger.
It was a small reminder of a lifelong dream fulfilled.
“Really surreal,” Meadows said. “I was playing with guys out there like Dansby (Swanson) and Cody. It hasn’t really hit me yet. I think I’ll come down here in a little bit and take it all in, but it was great.”
Contact Evan Petzold at epetzold@freepress.com or follow him on Twitter @EvanPetzold.