The Houston Astros are apparently willing to trade outfielder Jake Meyers and haven’t exactly been shy about it. Brian McTaggart of MLB.com reports that Houston continues to “dangle” him in trade talks as they plan to move forward with a prospect at the position. Their general manager noted at The Winter Meetings on Monday that they are looking for starting pitching.
There’s a lot going on with Jake Meyers, but let’s start with the simpler stuff. He’s coming off of the best season of his big league career. He played in 104 games and hit .292/.354/.373 with three home runs last year. Meyers had a career best 16 stolen bases, 53 runs scored, and 2.4 WAR. He’s under team control through at least the 2027 season, but also has two options remaining. In 2025 he made $2,300,000 and in 2026 MLB Trade Rumors believes he will get a raise to $3,500,000 in arbitration.
The Reds need to add offense to a not-so-good lineup that’s returning from last season. Adding a light-hitting outfielder probably doesn’t help a ton. Meyers had a high average in 2025, but hit for next to no power. In the past he’s hit for a little more power as he had 23 home runs in 260 games between the 2023 and 2024 seasons. It seems that he may have traded trying to hit for power for trying to make contact. The power fell off in a big way in 2025 after being below-average for the rest of his career. But he also posted by far his best rate of contact in 2025 as he struck out 17.6% of the time and also set a new personal best walk rate at 8.1%.
Meyers entered 2025 with a career on-base percentage of .292 and a career OPS of .662. He did much better than that in 2025. The contact rate certainly helped his average and his on-base percentage. But so did a BABIP (batting average on balls in play, where the MLB league average was .291 in 2025) of .353. Before the season his BABIP was sitting at .290. You can see his career stats here.
So we know he made more contact, but outside of that, did anything in hit batted ball profile change that could help explain a much higher BABIP than what he’s done to that point in his career? He did start hitting ground balls more often and those do tend to turn into hits more than non-ground balls. He also chased the ball out of the zone less than he ever has before and he made more contact on pitches in the zone, and those two things do tend to lead to better results.
When we jump into his Statcast data with regards to hitting the ball we can see that his exit velocity was 88.1 MPH, which was worse than in 2024, but better than his 2021-2023 time in the big leagues. His barrel rate was by far the lowest of his career. The launch angle was down quite a bit at just 9.8°, which isn’t surprising given his increase in grounders hit in 2025. The “expected” stats were all career bests, though.
His bat speed did slow down some overall in 2025 compared to the previous two years. Is rate of “fast swings (defined as 75 MPH or higher) was down significantly and was just 5%. Out of 275 players with at least 500 “competitive swings” in 2025 Meyers bat speed ranked 252nd and his “fast swing rate” was 248th, which sandwiched him directly behind Gavin Lux and directly ahead of Tyler Stephenson. Elly De La Cruz (43rd) and Noelvi Marte (86th) are the only Reds returning players who even cracked the top 175 in “fast swing rate” on the list of 275 players, with Ke’Bryan Hayes being a distance third on the team at 189th. Spencer Steer, TJ Friedl, Matt McLain, Stephenson and Lux all ranked 220th or lower.
Of course, hitting isn’t everything. Defense matters, too. One can argue how much based on the position, and in some cases the ballpark. That’s where Jake Meyers has succeeded in his career. The center fielder has been outstanding in his big league time and was a Gold Glove finalist in 2024.
The financial cost for Jake Meyers isn’t much. What it would take to trade for him is a bit unknown. Similarly, what kind of bat you’re going to get is also a bit unknown. He clearly made changes from the past in 2025 and it resulted in a different kind of hitter. While he was a league average hitter during the season the question is can he be one long term or was the 29-year-old riding a higher than ever before in his career BABIP to success?