The Rays have sent outfielder Austin Meadows to Detroit
The Tampa Bay Rays have traded outfielder Austin Meadows to the Detroit Tigers for Isaac Paredes and competitive balance B draft pick, it has been announced.
This seems like a weird deal. Meadows, who turns 27 next month, was the 9th overall pick in the 2013 by the Pittsburgh Pirates. Pittsburgh sent Meadows, Tyler Glasnow and Shane Baz to Tampa in 2018 for Chris Archer, a deal that seemed questionable at the time and seems really awful now.
Meadows had a very good 2019 season, but has slashed .228/.311/.440 since the start of 2020, and as a corner outfielder who isn’t considered very good defensively, that’s a less than ideal slash line. The Rays had reportedly been shopping him for a while, and the Tigers, looking to fortify their lineup, apparently bit.
The return for Tampa doesn’t seem that impressive. Paredes, 23, is a righthanded hitting infielder who has gotten around 200 major league plate appearances the past couple of seasons but hasn’t hit. The draft pick is useful, but I’d have thought the cost for Meadows, who has some upside and three years of team control remaining, would be higher than this.