Noble Meyer discusses his first pro start

Jupiter, FL—On a hot Saturday morning, Miami Marlins first-round draft pick Noble Meyer made his pro debut. The goal for Meyer was to go two innings, but he finished one out shy of that. There were still a lot of positives to take away from his start in the Florida Complex League.

Meyer definitely had full control against the FCL Mets in the first inning where he struck out fellow first-round pick Colin Houck and then Dariel Gomez. In the second inning, there were signs of fatigue as he began losing his control, causing a walk and a base hit that led to his removal from the game. Meyer threw 35 total pitches.

"I've had better days," said Meyer following the game. "Fastball command wasn't there, especially early in the count and then gotta get ahead. So I can say that was really happening today. The first time I've been in a game since June 2, so it's been two months. You could say it's to be expected, but I'm a little glad it didn't go perfectly so I got something to build off of. I got things to work on and I dealt with some form of failure one way or another. So kind of a step in the right direction."

"I've only thrown bullpens for 20 pitches," Meyer added. "So once I hit that 20-pitch mark, and I'd also thrown a pregame bullpen a little longer than what I've been used to in the past few weeks. As soon as I get stronger—I'm 195, almost 200 pounds now—so build that up to 215 to 220, I should be able to maintain control and velocity throughout the nine innings."

Although we saw Meyer's pitch arsenal on display, he mainly stuck to his fastball and curveball. According to my colleague Alex Carver, Meyer's fastball sat between 92-95 mph and the curveball was around 78-79 mph. His other two pitches, the changeup and sweeper, were both sitting at 85 mph.

Meyer also mentioned how he wants to improve on getting first-pitch strikes.

"Want to work on strike one," said Meyer. "Especially with the fastball. Man, I don't think I threw a single fastball for a first-pitch strike, but I had two curveballs out of the zone, two or three first pitches for strikes. So I think that's big because I can't rely on throwing a curveball first pitch every time and then the big thing they preach here is get two (strikes) out of three, the first three pitches (of the count)."

Meyer's next start is expected to be next Saturday at Jupiter. His pitch count might go up from where it was in his debut, but he is being built up gradually, so don't expect anything close a full-length start.

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