Right-hander Alex Meyer has announced his retirement via Instagram, Mike DiGiovanna of the Los Angeles Times reports.
“After multiple surgeries and countless hours of rehab, the end of the road for my baseball career has come,” said the 29-year-old.
As Meyer noted, injuries were a problem throughout his career, which began in 2011 when the Nationals chose the ex-Kentucky Wildcat 23rd overall. The 6-foot-9 Meyer’s union with the Nationals came together three years after he declined to sign with the Red Sox for $2.2MM as a 20th-rounder in 2008.
Meyer lasted with the Nationals through the 2012 season, after which they traded him to the Twins for outfielder Denard Span. While the hard-throwing Meyer eventually blossomed into one of baseball’s top 50 prospects with Minnesota, he dealt with shoulder issues as a member of the organization and made minimal impact in the majors. Meyer totaled 6 1/3 innings as a Twin from 2015-16, and the team traded him to the Angels in an August 2016 deal that delivered Hector Santiago to Minnesota.
Meyer ultimately garnered almost all of his major league experience as an Angel, with whom he pitched to a 3.94 ERA/4.09 FIP and posted 10.01 K/9 against 5.56 BB/9 across 89 innings and 18 starts from 2016-17. Meyer then underwent surgery on a torn shoulder labrum in September 2017 and never made it back to the majors, though the Angels did re-sign him to a minor league contract last December.
Although Meyer’s time in pro baseball didn’t go the way he wanted, he still ended on a high note. In the final appearance of his career July 19, 2017, Meyer tossed seven innings of shutout, one-hit ball with seven strikeouts against one walk in a 7-0 win over his first team, the Nationals.
He’s 29 years old according to baseball reference.
yeah, he is 29. 2017, the last year he played, was his age-27 season.
Conner, do you know what happened to Steve Adams chat? His chat inputs stopped abruptly at 3:53 PM, while remaining in live mode. Probably nothing, but seems a little worrisome…
He was probably chatting while driving. RIP Steve Adams.
Ha!
Apologies on the abrupt ending. There was a server error on our chat software provider’s end, it seems. I wasn’t able to receive new questions, publish any updates or even end the chat, unfortunately. Seems like a one-off incident, so hopefully there won’t be any repeat troubles.
Thanks Steve.
sucks for the dude, he looked like he really found something in 2017.
In other news, who the hell is Alex Meyer?
He’s the guy the Nationals dumped on the Twins when they stole Denard Span.
That was the year the Twins traded BOTH their center field capable players for the next pitching stars: Alex Meyer and Trevor May (May was obtained from the Phillies along with Vance Worley for Ben Revere).
He’s also the throw-in in the trade in which the Twins sent Ricky Nolasco and Cash to the Angels for Hector Santiago and Alan Busenitz.. Based on the status of all 4 of those pitchers, tells you what kind of trade THAT was.
Musical nobodies
Twins like to do that. Aaron Hicks for JR Murphy was another fleecing of a CF.
Maybe they should trade Buxton for Alex Wood or something.
twins fans u are funny! Yeah we probably just broke even on that trade
You could ask that inane question about 65% of the players listed on this site. In other words, don’t.
He’s a guy who played in the major leagues, something I never got to do.
Wow 6-9 he’s a tall one
best of luck in retirement! hope for the healthy future.
Nothing but the best. That game he pitched against the Nats was a beauty.
Zack Cozart and Alex Meyer are the two “Gary Matthews Jr.” in Eppler’s signing record….Ohh, and dont forget Josh Hamilton…
Cosart maybe, but how is Neyer’s acquisition in any way analogous to the Matthews signing?
I hate how the Cubs had Josh Hamilton in their system for 30 seconds. Could have been something special for the Cubs. I remember Gary Mathews jr on the Cubs too. Theres so many players out there that made the major league level that probably should not have been there. from brant brown to roosevelt brown Kevin orie. Just to name a few Cub players.
GMJ signing was far worse than Cozart’s deal and Meyer was part of a trade not a big FA signing. Hamilton was signed under Tony Reagins, the GM before Dipoto.
Eppler is one of the top 2-3 mg’s the angels have ever had. His worst signing is Brad Ausmus which he will correct in the offseason,
Imo.
Jules, bill stoneman signed GM JR. dipoto signed josh hamilton, Eppler signed cozart and traded hector Santiago and Alan busenitz to the twins for Alex Meyer and Ricky nolasco. Eppler only gambled on cozart, Harvey and Cahill because they were due for bounce back seasons and depth.
This is a shame. Alex Meyer has a gift. A gift most will never fully appreciate. I used Alex Meyer as a reference to a few kids that have played for me. It just takes time, but he is too young to give up.
Most guys that are tall take time to learn how to pitch. Look at Randy Johnson’s stats on the expos.
Hopefully he doesn’t regret this like every other Uber talented pitcher ahead of him. But of course he will. Ugh!
there is a major difference between johnson and meyer though:
money. alex made millions without ever pitching much in the big leagues (if he turned down 2.2. mil in high school, then was a 1st round pick 3 years later, sure his bonus was way more than that).
randy, otoh, wouldn’t have made much by the time he finally got called up by the expos
I expected to see this. I’ve been keeping a bit of an eye on him and there was just no news, more no news, and endless no news. If he was legitimately going to be coming back, he would have been pitching by May and it just never happened.
Meyer had a near 100mph fastball and a devastating slider. The Nationals drafted him in 2011, signing with a $2.0M bonus as the 23rd overall selection. The Nationals wanted him to be a starter, but it looked like his control issues were making that prospect iffy when the Denard Span trade went down.
Meyer became a top 3 Twins prospect, but control woes kept him in MiLB for quite a while. He was moderately successful as a spot starter for the Twins when they dumped him just to get somebody to take Ricky Nolasco. Meyer’s future value was still looking reasonably good at that point and it was considered a pretty asinine, penny-pinching move by the Twins… sort of like what they did again with Phil Hughes.
Sad to see, but on the bright side he already works as a substitute teacher in his home town during the offseason, so my guess is that he’ll be working as a high school coach sooner or later.