Noble Meyer’s quest to be ‘best version’ of himself continues as Marlins’ first-round pick
Noble Meyer’s journey from an initial interest in baseball to becoming the No. 10 overall pick in the 2023 MLB Draft starting like so many others.
“Playing in the backyard with my dad with wiffle balls,” Meyer said. “If you hit it into the neighbor’s yard, it’s a home run. If you hit their window, it’s an out. Ever since then, I’ve actually loved the sport.”
But getting to where Meyer is today is something he never thought would become reality as quickly as it has.
The lanky 18-year-old out of Jesuit High in Portland, Oregon, never considered himself as one of the best prospects. He never boasted about becoming a future Major League Baseball player growing up, partly because of his humble and grounded nature, partly because he wasn’t sure how long the journey would be to get to that point should he get the opportunity.
“If you told me I would have been the 10th overall pick in this year’s draft like a year ago, maybe two years ago, I would have thought you were crazy,” Meyer said.
Yet that’s what happened. The Miami Marlins took Meyer at No. 10, selecting the consensus top high school pitcher with their top pick in a draft littered with high-end hitters.
And the moment fittingly came at Seattle’s T-Mobile Park, a three-hour drive from home in West Lin, Oregon. The Meyer family had made the drive to Seattle a few dozen times to watch Mariners games. It made this drive all the more special to see Noble Meyer get one step closer to his dream.
“It’s hard to find words for it,” said Michael Meyer, Noble’s dad. “Just really an amazing, proud night for us.”
The emotion and gravity of the moment still hasn’t sunk in for Noble Meyer — “it probably won’t sink in for a long while,” he noted — but he knows now that the real work begins.
Meyer’s combination of pure athleticism, analytical intrigue and a desire to keep improving got him to this point.
Now, he will use those traits to keep pushing toward his ultimate dream of being a big leaguer.
“I just wanted to keep playing, keep getting better,” Meyer said. “That’s just really who I was. I just wanted to be the best version of myself, and I found that I kept getting better.”
‘A complete pitcher’
When it comes to taking pitchers in the first round, especially at the top of the first round, Marlins senior director of amateur scouting DJ Svihlik has a rule in place.
“At this part in the draft,” Svihlik said, “we really force the pitchers to bully their way to the front and push the position players out of the way.”
Meyer did just that his senior year. Over 63 innings pitched in his final season at Jesuit, Meyer posted a 0.33 ERA and 128 strikeouts while walking just 19 batters en route to being named the 2022-23 Gatorade Oregon Baseball Player of the Year. This included a 10-strikeout, complete-game performance against Clearwater Calvary Christian at the National High School Invitational in Cary, North Carolina.
Marlins area scout Scott Fairbanks, who oversees prospects in northern California and the northwest, saw all of Meyer’s starts last season, something Svihlik stressed as pivotal if the team was going to take a high school pitcher at No. 10, a selection with a signing bonus slot value of $5,475,300.
The final verdict?
“Noble Meyer is a complete pitcher,” Svihlik said. “He’s very, very well balanced. He’s highly technical, but he’s got a great feel. He’s very intelligent, but he’s also very practical and logical. And he doesn’t really overthink things. So there was just a wonderful balance with him.”
Meyer dazzles with a two-seam fastball that sits in the mid-90s and has touched 97-98 mph.
But to Meyer, his best offering is is mid-80s slider that has the potential to be a quality strikeout pitch in pro ball. He also has good feel for his changeup and has been developing a curveball.
“This is a pitcher who we believe will be a top-of-the-rotation type pitcher,” Marlins general manager Kim Ng said. “He’s got four pitches, three of them plus. One of the things that struck me as we talked about him, watched video, was the confidence and poise that this particular pitcher has. He’s just a real polished kid.”
‘A freak athlete mixed with a very smart kid’
While Meyer’s success his senior year put him over the top for the Marlins, his evolution over his high school career set him up for that success.
He never took an opportunity to improve for granted. As the son of two civil engineers, Meyer was always mathematically inclined, so his ability and willingness to dive into analytics along with the sheer potential coming from his right arm was a combination for success.
“He’s the formula of a freak athlete mixed with a very smart kid,” said Colin Griffin, the head coach at Jesuit High.
As Griffin remembers it, Meyer always carried a baseball with him. During bullpen sessions, he would practice with a variety of grips, sometimes changing how he holds the ball “by a quarter of an inch or quarter of a turn, just to see if he could get more spin rate or get more bite on the ball.”
“He’s always been very in tune with what he can get out of his body,” Griffin said.
To Michael Meyer, the real jump came the summer before his sophomore year. Meyer’s freshman year was wiped out due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Club baseball was limited. Meyer was invited to a Prep Baseball Report event in Georgia.
“That of course got him on the radar,” Michael Meyer said. “Everything just kept growing since. ... He just steadily got bigger, stronger and better since then.”
That understanding of himself has paid dividends. When he tried out for the Jesuit team as a freshman, his fastball sat in the low 80s. Over the course of the next three years, behind a combination of putting on muscle and improving his mechanics, he pushed his velocity to about 88 mph as a sophomore, then the low 90s as a junior and then finally to the upper 90s by his senior year.
“It kind of just happened where I really delved into baseball and tried to get better in any way possible,” Meyer said, “whether that was getting stronger or looking at numbers.”
Growing up a Mariners fan, Meyer idolized Felix Hernandez from a young age. As he got older, he began to study the likes of Jacob deGrom, Charlie Morton and the Marlins’ Sandy Alcantara.
“Those are the big names that I really like watching and analyzing, just seeing how they attack people because they have somewhat of a similar approach to what I do,” Meyer said. “To see what they do and to see them succeed at the highest level, it’s good to take notes.”
Meyer also understands where he needs to improve to take the next step in his game.
First up is improving the fastball command. The velocity is there, but that doesn’t mean much if he can’t control it. Second is building up his stamina. Like most high school pitchers, he wasn’t asked to throw an excessive number of innings, but Meyer ultimately wants to be a workhorse who can be trusted to throw 200 innings in a season down the road.
He also understands the pedigree of pitching that the Marlins have developed over the past few years, name dropping Alcantara and Eury Perez among the “laundry list” of quality arms the Marlins have.
Some day, sooner than later, he wants his name to be attached to that group.
This story was originally published July 12, 2023 at 12:14 PM.
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