Local product Wade Meckler injects life into Angels’ lineup

ANAHEIM — The Oregon State baseball team was in the middle of a scrimmage when word came that Wade Meckler had hit a home run on the first pitch he saw in his return to the big leagues.

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“We’re all going wild,” Oregon State coach Mitch Canham recalled. “This is awesome.”

It was another chapter in a story that Canham tells often to his players.

“I don’t know how many times through a week I’m bringing up Wade and his story,” Canham said. “To be a walk-on, to be undersized and not make the team two years in a row and he makes the big leagues faster than anyone who came through Oregon State. I’m telling you, I can’t wait to read the book and watch the movie they make about him.”

Although so much has gone wrong during this dismal Angels season, one of the few shining lights has been Meckler, a kid who grew up as an Angels fan in Orange County.

Just about a dozen years after he was a 4-foot-10 freshman at Esperanza High who could barely hit the ball out of the infield, Meckler was playing left field for the Angels. He was sitting in the middle of the order, high-fiving with Mike Trout after driving him in with a homer.

Meckler, 26, doesn’t give himself much time to stop and appreciate the journey, though. There’s always another game around the corner.

“Just focus on today and compete,” Meckler said.

Meckler’s attitude is part of why he’s become such a favorite of fans and teammates in his first two weeks with the Angels. The other part is the way he plays, with an energy and reckless abandon that takes no breaks. The first thing he did in an Angels uniform in the regular season was crash into the wall making a sliding catch on a foul ball. The second thing he did was hit a three-run homer against two-time Cy Young Award winner Jacob deGrom.

A week later he added a grand slam against the Tampa Bay Rays’ Drew Rasmussen. He’s hitting .389 with an OPS of 1.060 through his first 38 plate appearances.

“It seems like every at-bat is a quality at-bat,” Angels manager Kurt Suzuki said. “He puts the barrel on it, whether he gets a hit or he gets out. I feel like it’s always a quality at-bat, and you know what you’re going to get. I’m not saying he’s going to be perfect, but the majority of the time, I feel like it’s a quality at-bat. He has good energy, plays the game the right way. Everything that you want in a baseball player.”

He’s drawn comparisons to former Angels right fielder Kole Calhoun, for his style of play, his stature (5-9) and his red hair. Calhoun and Meckler both went undrafted until after their fourth year of college, while most top prospects are selected out of high school and again after their junior year of college.

It’s part of why Meckler has always played with something to prove.

When he played at Esperanza as a freshman, he was “an infielder who could pick it, who could run and who could bunt,” Meckler said. He grew a few inches each year. His senior year he hit .375, but he still had no offers to play Division I baseball other than an invitation to walk on at Oregon State.

Meckler barely played as a freshman, and then when a new coaching staff came in, he was cut. At that point, the COVID pandemic offered Meckler an opportunity.

He lived in the attic of a house with three Oregon State players, and they spent the pandemic just working out in the gym and hitting.

“For the first time, I wasn’t worried about getting cut and there was no practice, there were no intrasquad (games),” Meckler said. “So I was able to just completely revamp everything without worrying about whether I was going to look good in the intrasquad that day.”

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In 2021, Meckler made the team again, and he became an integral part of the program. It was also around that time that he worked with Tyler Graham, who was a graduate assistant at Oregon State, on his plate discipline.

“We would do this drill every day where he would basically just throw BP where I wouldn’t swing,” Meckler said. “I would just yes and no, ball or strike. Or yes and no, swing, no swing, based on the count. It kind of takes the variables out of like, ‘Did I take a good swing?’ or ‘Did I not take a good swing?’ The only thing that matters is the swing decision.”

He hit .347 with a .456 on-base percentage as a senior, and the San Francisco Giants picked him in the eighth round of the draft. Thirteen months later, he was in the major leagues. He played 20 games with the Giants, hitting .232 with a .528 OPS.

Back in the minors, Meckler dealt with injuries in 2024 and 2025. He also did another retooling of his swing.

“I don’t want to give away too much, but there were some changes to approach, some swing changes that needed to happen,” he said. “There was a very clear way that I was getting pitched. There were some outliers in locations and pitch types that I needed to correct, so I spent that offseason correcting them.”

The Giants designated Meckler for assignment last winter. The Angels claimed him and subsequently designated him, but that time he went unclaimed so the Angels kept him. Meckler opened some eyes in spring training, but he ultimately began the year at Double-A Rocket City. He hit .347 with a .975 OPS, and that got him to the big leagues when Josh Lowe was optioned.

All he’s done since then is win over fans, in the stands and in the Angels’ clubhouse.

The Angels needed production from the left side of the plate. They needed someone who gets on base and puts the ball in play. Meckler checks all three boxes.

Besides the raw production, the energy seemingly gave some life to an Angels’ lineup that was in a rut before he arrived.

“I’m not saying it’s going to rub off on everybody, but I think just being out there watching him play, I think it just brings a certain type of energy to the team that every team needs,” Suzuki said.

Meckler said he’s not trying to be any kind of example. He’s just being himself.

“I just know how to play the game one way, and if that provides energy, great,” he said. “I’m trying to help the team on both sides of the ball. I’m trying to help the team win.”

UP NEXT

Angels (LHP Reid Detmers, 2-5, 4.63 ERA) at Dodgers (RHP Roki Sasaki, 3-3, 4.59 ERA), Friday, 7:10 p.m., ABTV, 830 AM

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