Ball players always try to come to camp in the best shape possible, but Rays outfielder Austin Meadows has made the coaching staff and manager Kevin Cash sit up and take notice.
“He’s cut some weight, and I think that was his goal to do that,” Cash said Thursday. “He wanted to get that quick-twitch back a little bit better.”
After starting the 2020 season contracting COVID-19, and then missing a significant part of the end of the regular season and start of the postseason dealing with a grade 2 oblique strain, the 25-year-old outfielder said he redoubled his efforts during the off-season to get back to his 2019 All-Star form.
“I got after it pretty well,” Meadows said. “I took a couple of weeks off once we got home after the World Series, but then got that itch to get back after it. All around, I ran with [strength and conditioning assistant Joe] Greany, and just continued to work. Try to lose 10-15 pounds to kind of get back to my athletic self, and I feel really good.”
Meadows said he is down to about 220 pounds, around where he played in 2019, and down about ten pounds from last season.
“I feel that in 2019, I was in a really good spot when it came to weight-wise, kind of like where I am now in feeling athletic and light on my feet,” Meadows said. “Last year, I wasn’t that. I was a little bit heavier. Didn’t feel as athletic, and obviously that kind of hurt my performance. I learned from that, and we’re looking forward and I’m in a good spot.”
Steve Carney is the founder and publisher of St. Pete Nine. One of the people most associated with baseball coverage in Tampa Bay, he spent 13 seasons covering the Rays for flagship radio station WDAE, first as producer of Rays Radio broadcasts, then as beat reporter beginning in 2011. He likes new analytics and aged bourbon, and is the owner of one of the ugliest knuckleballs ever witnessed by baseball scouts.
