How an ‘electric’ outing and a challenge to scouts led the Miami Marlins to Max Meyer
It’s a few hours before the Minnesota Golden Gophers baseball team faces the North Carolina Tar Heels, and Max Meyer is confident.
That shouldn’t be a surprise. The lanky 6-0, 200-pound right-handed pitcher is always confident. On this day, though, there was something different.
He meets with head coach John Anderson and pitching coach Ty McDevitt prior to the game and gives a simple proclamation.
“I think I’m going to pitch a no-hitter tonight,” he tells the coaches.
“OK, Max,” Anderson tells his ace. “Let’s just get through the first inning.”
The no-hitter ended in the second when he gave up a leadoff double. A chance for a shutout ended with a sacrifice fly in the fourth.
But Meyer dazzled from the moment he stepped on the mound to the sounds of Billy Squier’s “The Stroke” to his 112th and final pitch in Minnesota’s 4-1 win over the Tar Heels on that Feb. 28 night at U.S. Bank Stadium.
“A great feeling,” Meyer said of his complete-game effort, the first in his career.
From the stands, Miami Marlins director of amateur scouting DJ Svihlik watches in awe as Meyer strikes out 14, using a sweeping slider that might become one of the best in the game and serves as a perfect pairing for his 100 mph fastball.
“You sat there and you looked at the scout to your left and you looked at the scout to your right and everybody was going, ‘Have we ever seen this before?’” Svihlik said. “It was electric. You had guys going, ‘Is this the best slider we’ve ever seen?’ It was that type of deal. When you see that as a scout, you know when you’re seeing something special and you say we gotta have it.”
The Marlins turned their dream — and Max Meyer’s — into a reality when they took Meyer No. 3 overall in the 2020 Major League Baseball Draft on Wednesday, adding yet another high-end pitching prospect into their organization. It started a trend for Miami this year, as the Marlins used all six picks in this shortened, five-round draft on pitchers after prioritizing position players at the top of each of the past two draft cycles.
But picking Meyer at No. 3 also meant the Marlins, at least from an outsider’s perspective, went against the grain.
Also on the board when the Marlins were on the clock: Texas A&M’s Asa Lacy, a 6-4, 215-pound left-handed pitcher viewed by most pundits as the best pitcher in the draft and the player just about every mock draft had Miami selecting. He went one pick later to the Kansas City Royals.
But Meyer, Svihlik insists, was the player the Marlins internally believed was the best for their long-term goals as they reaches a critical juncture in their rebuild.
So they took the chance.
“Is it hard? It’s not comfortable. It’s not comfortable as you go through the process,” Svihlik said, “but when you get to the finish line, you take a deep breath and you go, ‘we took the right player.’ And that’s all you can do. I will never pull a player off the board out of fear of what he might become. I take a player, and I recommend a player on what I believe he is. And that’s why we took Max Meyer.”
Only time will tell if the Marlins made the right call.
Jumping up the draft board
Before the 2020 high school and college baseball seasons began, Svihlik gave his scouts a challenge. Forget about the top players in the draft for a moment. Put the Spencer Torkelsons and Austin Martins and Asa Lacys and Emerson Hancocks to the side. Everyone knows they’re the top prospects this year. Everyone is assuming the teams picking at the top of the draft are going to pigeon hole themselves into taking one of those players.
Svihlik wanted information on the next 10 or so players on the draft board, as much information as he could get.
“From that 10,” Svihlik said, “somebody is going to make you look bad.”
Enter Meyer, a two-time member of the Team USA Collegiate Baseball National Team who Svihlik on Wednesday referred to as “the most athletic college pitcher in this draft with the most electric stuff.”
The 21-year-old was already a name the Marlins had enough interest in to have some of their top scouts assigned to watch him during his junior year, which was ultimately shortened to a month of action due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.
The question: Was he good enough to justify picking at No. 3?
Svihlik got his answer on college baseball’s opening weekend. Svihlik was at Auburn scouting Tigers pitcher Tanner Burns on Feb. 14 when he got a phone call from a scout in Arizona who was watching Meyer pitch against Oregon.
“You will not believe what this looks like now,” Svihlik remembers the scout telling him.
Meyer’s fastball touched 102, his slider was as legitimate as they thought and he struck out seven batters in five innings.
Two weeks later, Svihlik made his way to Minnesota to see it in person. One nine-inning performance against North Carolina later, and Meyer was practically penciled in as the Marlins’ pick at No. 3 three months before the draft began.
“We did a deeper dive, and that was it,” Svihlik said. “... I’m sure there’s some really good guys going off the board right now. It was a dogfight, and this guy just took it over.”
‘Always had a passion’
Want an example of Meyer’s love for the game? Look no further than a photo that his parents still reminisce about to this day.
Meyer was 9 years old playing for the Woodbury Royals’ 10-year-old travel baseball team, 15 miles from Minneapolis. During one game, Meyer’s friend Logan Welch was called to the mound in the ninth inning. The Royals had a one-run lead.
Before Welch threw his first pitch, Meyer made his way to the mound, grabbed a fistful of his teammate’s jersey, said a few choice words and then went back to manning third base as if all was normal.
“He just always had a passion, the playful passion, the competitiveness and everything,” Kent Meyer, Max’s dad, said. “But it started at a young age.”
Max Meyer had good genes to work with. Both Kent and wife Kathy played sports at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. Kent was on the football team. Kathy played soccer. Max’s older brother, Ben, played baseball.
In addition to baseball, Max Meyer played hockey through his senior year at Woodbury High and would have played football past his freshman year, too, if not for coaches telling him he had to play on the lightweight team. He’s also a pretty good ping-pong player, according to Kevin McDermott, his baseball coach at Woodbury High.
“We just made sure he played as many sports as he could so he could figure out what he wanted to do and or what he wanted to keep going in,” Kent Meyer said.
But his love was, and still is, baseball. It was fostered by backyard games with his dad and brother. It matured into a way to let his competitive juices flow.
“He’s a winner,” McDermott said. “He’s really competitive, he’s light-hearted and he likes to have fun, but when he gets between the lines and he’s on that mound, he’s a different kid. He just consistently finds a way, and his stuff is filthy. He’s just gonna win.”
‘He was always doubted’
Not everyone was sold on Meyer, though.
No one debated his tools. A 100 mph fastball and top-end slider is enough to pique any scout’s interest.
His size? That was another story, one that Meyer had to maneuver around most of his life. He was always lanky, barely 165 pounds on a 6-0 frame when he got to college. Not the ideal size for a starting pitcher.
“He was always doubted,” Kent Meyer said. “Whenever I would talk to people about him, they would laugh him off because they see his size.”
Meyer ignored those remarks. Always has. Always will. He knows he’s good enough he will make sure to get your attention.
“I’ve heard it a bunch my whole life,” Meyer said, “but when I get out on the field and I see all these big boys, I just love to compete against them. It fires me up when people around me are also doing really well because that just brings my game to the next level.”
And boy, did he always find ways to turn heads.
There was a Perfect Game showcase during his prep days. Meyer played shortstop but ultimately had a chance to get on the mound.
“He just lit the place up,” Kent Meyer said. “Afterward, he takes his bag and is walking to the parking lot and this guy comes running after him and says ‘Hey, Max! Hey, Max! Awesome job!”
There was his high school career at Woodbury. He didn’t join the varsity team until his sophomore year and emerged as a playmaker late in the season. His velocity didn’t pick up until his junior year, so he relied more on command early on.
Max’s senior year? He had a 0.79 ERA and struck out 111 batters in 79 1/3 innings. His fastball was hitting in the low-to-mid-90s and his slider that would eventually separate him from the rest of the pack began coming to form.
“He wasn’t just a kid who sat there as a 13-year-old and threw by guys,” McDermott said. “He had to pitch. He had to mix and match and spot and do all those things. And then once his velocity came in later, it became really special.”
There was his time at Minnesota, where he had a career 2.07 ERA and held opponents to a .182 batting average. He struck out 187 of the 594 career batters he faced — 31.5 percent. Meyer was successful as a starter and a reliever, racking up a school-record 16 saves as a freshman before moving into the starting rotation as a sophomore.
Anderson, who has been the head coach at Minnesota for 39 years, said Meyer is among the top two pitchers he has coached. The other: Three-time MLB All-Star Glen Perkins, who the Twins picked 22nd overall in the 2004 draft.
There were the two stints with the Team USA Baseball Collegiate National Team in 2018 and 2019. Meyer was a reliever his first stint, earning seven saves in eight appearances, and led the staff with 15 strikeouts. He started three of four games he played in 2019, posting a 0.64 ERA in 14 innings while striking out 12.
More than enough to put him on the Marlins’ radar. Svihlik compared Meyer to a slew of undersized-yet-successful MLB starting pitchers: Tim Lincecum, Marcus Stroman, Sonny Gray, Roy Oswalt and, for the older crowd, Bret Saberhagen and David Cone.
“We knew he was a name,” Marlins president of baseball operations Michael Hill said. ”We didn’t know he was going to be the name until we saw how much progress he had made in just making himself a better pitcher. It was doing our work and making this could be our guy in a very deep pitching draft — and there were other guys that that were in the conversation — but ultimately we felt the combination of stuff and command of that stuff, along with his athleticism. ... All of those things added up to him being the pick at number three and making a lot of sense to us to make him the No. 3 pick.”
‘You just go berserk’
Meyer had an inkling the Marlins might draft him Wednesday. He was understandably talking with other teams at the time as well but knew he was on Miami’s radar.
And then, a little after 6 p.m. Central Time, Meyer got the phone call.
“Are you ready to win?” Svihlik asked from the other side of the conversation.
“Absolutely,” Meyer responded. “Let’s go.”
The celebration began. He was officially a top-five pick. He was officially part of the Marlins organization. He got the congratulatory phone call from CEO Derek Jeter shortly afterward.
“When they say your son’s name,” Kent Meyer said, “you just go berserk.”
So where does Meyer fit into the Marlins’ long-term plans?
“Absolutely a starter,” Svihlik said. “I wouldn’t have pulled him off the board if I didn’t think he was a starter. He’s never given us a reason not to.”
And Meyer’s presence just continues to add to the Marlins’ young-yet-promising organizational pitching depth. Heading into the draft, 13 of organization’s top 30 prospects according to MLBPipeline are pitchers. Five — Sixto Sanchez (No. 1), Edward Cabrera (No. 5), Braxton Garrett (No. 6), Trevor Rogers (No. 8) and Nick Neidert (No. 10) — rank among the top 10 for the franchise.
“They’ve got a bunch of new fresh arms ready to go and they’re almost here to win now,” Meyer said. “I’m ready to go whenever I get a call or to see what happens I’m ready to go.”
And when he gets there, Meyer has one goal in mind.
“I want to win championships,” Meyer said. “I want to win World Series. That’s my main goal. Whether it’s me being on MVP teams or whatnot or All-Star games, I don’t care. I just want to get a ring on my finger.”
This story was originally published June 12, 2020 at 11:46 AM.
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