Jo Adell isn't getting better

[Angelsjunky]

I know, Master of the Obvious. But look at his 2024 stats compared to his career:

There's literally no improvement. There was hope early on as he had a good April, but has been absolute trash since - and his overall numbers are right in line with the rest of his career.

Maybe its not fair to pick on Adell, but he pretty much exemplifies what is wrong with this org: A toolsy player drafted #10 overall (their highest pick in 17 years), who was totally mishandled developmentally by the Angels.

Given that the Angels are unlikely to compete for the next few years, there's not a lot of harm in continuing to play him in the off chance that he figures something out. But at this point, does anyone expect anything different? We're about a month and a half from 1000 PA for his career, so this simply might be the player that Jo Adell is. Oh, and he's eligible for arbitration this off-season. Wonder how that will go for him.

[DMVol]

He was a little better in 21/22 than this year.

[T.G.]

@Chuck we need one of these...

 

[CaliAngel]

From what I've seen over the past couple years of watching him, it's becoming pretty obvious that he's a head case.

We all know how much baseball is a mental game, and either he's not getting enough individual mentoring, or what mentoring he's getting is not making an impact. It seems like he is always pushing way to hard to contribute, and when he finds himself in the middle of high leverage situations, his baseball IQ drops. The boneheaded mistakes on the base paths are part of it, and now he's back to swinging terribly like he did in the past when he was struggling. 

He has the power, he has the physical ability. He just needs to go up there with the mentality that he's only going to swing at strikes. And he doesn't need to swing hard, we've seen plenty of amazing power from him, even home runs, when he just takes a nice easy swing and makes good contact with the ball.

I can't believe over the course of time that we've had him, nobody's been able to connect with him eye to eye to get his head game under control, because I really think it's that more than anything. 

[Vlad27Trout27]

You let him go out there and see what he can do. Honestly, the added leg kick hasn’t helped him with high pitches, which he’s struggled with. This is his season, and we just have to hope he rediscovers his early-season swing.

Like Moniak, he needs to stick to a line-drive approach, aiming for the middle and avoiding the temptation to pull the ball. Earlier in the season, he was focusing on right field, but something changed, and he started trying to pull everything, resulting in missed pitches he would have otherwise taken to right field.

[Chuck]

While I agree offensively, his defense is night and day better. 

[Angelsjunky]

11 minutes ago, Chuck said:

While I agree offensively, his defense is night and day better. 

Sure, but as a corner outfielder, about 90%* of his value should be coming from his bat. Dude is an overall shitty ballplayer - crap contact and discipline, dumb base-running, passable defense, but he's strong!

*Yes, that number was pulled out of my ass, but it illustrates my point.

[James]

18 minutes ago, Chuck said:

While I agree offensively, his defense is night and day better. 

He can almost routinely track a fly ball now. 

[Jason]

I remember when it was a non starter with any trade talks. D'oh!

[Angelsjunky]

1 minute ago, Jason said:

I remember when it was a non starter with any trade talks. D'oh!

To be fair, I think part of it is that he's always fit within a weird category of having a combination of good potential but low actual performance-based value, and the chances of him reaching his potential are low enough to reduce his trade value to the point that he's worth more to the team on the dice roll of his potential than what he will bring back.

Or to put it another way, he doesn't have a lot of trade value right now. He's basically equivalent to a 45 FV 25-year old prospect, rather than the 20-year old 60 FV prospect he was 4-5 years ago.

[AngelsFaninGA]

Organization widely ridiculed for its awful player development fails to develop another player. Big surprise there.

[Chuck]

Back in August of 2021 we had a small gathering of folks present at the Frisco Roughriders ballpark where we got food, beers and access to river pool beyond the outfield fences. @totdprods was there, so was @Angel Oracle. 

While we were all floating in the water, Victor sat above us and took some questions from our group and told some funny stories.

Here's one of them: Victor Rojas when interviewing for the GM gig for the Angels was asked several different questions and one of them was what would your first order of business be as Angels GM be. 

He said something along the lines of "I would trade Jo Adell". That he didn't think he was going to be a major league caliber player/starter. 

[Taylor]

He'll be fine. No reason to give up on him.

[Slegnaac]

51 minutes ago, Angelsjunky said:

Sure, but as a corner outfielder, about 90%* of his value should be coming from his bat. Dude is an overall shitty ballplayer - crap contact and discipline, dumb base-running, passable defense, but he's strong!

*Yes, that number was pulled out of my ass, but it illustrates my point.

This is why he is bound to be the every day CF once they announce Trout will not be medically capable of playing the field.

[halodground]

He seems to be obviously guessing at what is going to be thrown to him more than any batter I can recall. I don’t know if it’s just that he looks extra terrible on those swings or that he is really overthinking his at bats. 
 

The only glimmer of hope I have with him is evidenced by his defense this year. Previously I would say he was in the top handful of worst defensive outfielders I’ve seen. Legit horrendous in all aspects. He’s been a completely different guy out there this year, looking solid, even good, and the transformation was pretty sudden. So that little glimmer of hope is that he just takes a long time to figure hitting out, but it comes on quickly. Clearly, hitting is a much tougher part of the game, but it’s a little hope at least.

[Erstad Grit]

He hasn't butchered any fly balls into the stands making them homeruns this year! 

 

[johndw52]

1 hour ago, CaliAngel said:

From what I've seen over the past couple years of watching him, it's becoming pretty obvious that he's a head case.

We all know how much baseball is a mental game, and either he's not getting enough individual mentoring, or what mentoring he's getting is not making an impact. It seems like he is always pushing way to hard to contribute, and when he finds himself in the middle of high leverage situations, his baseball IQ drops. The boneheaded mistakes on the base paths are part of it, and now he's back to swinging terribly like he did in the past when he was struggling. 

He has the power, he has the physical ability. He just needs to go up there with the mentality that he's only going to swing at strikes. And he doesn't need to swing hard, we've seen plenty of amazing power from him, even home runs, when he just takes a nice easy swing and makes good contact with the ball.

I can't believe over the course of time that we've had him, nobody's been able to connect with him eye to eye to get his head game under control, because I really think it's that more than anything. 

I agree with your emphasis on mentoring. I would think Tori or Tim would be perfect in this role. But who knows maybe Arte wont shell out the few extra bucks to make it happen. After the Clint Hurdle fiasco, his m.o. seems to be bean counting instead of developing the "kids".  I could never stand micromanagers, all ego.

[Chuck]

@mulwin444 offered this on X. 

 

[Chuck]

55 minutes ago, Taylor said:

He'll be fine. No reason to give up on him.

I don't think anyone is saying give up on him, just that his struggles are apparent and instead of building upon a good start in April and beginning of May, he's been spiraling down hill ever since. 

[tdawg87]

His plate discipline flipped a switch sometime in May and hasn't flipped back.

Obviously pitchers adjusted and Adell hasn't. The potential is there but you can't have a dude batting .170. 

[m0nkey]

27 minutes ago, Chuck said:

@mulwin444 offered this on X. 

 

Damn, that's a name I haven't thought of in a while

[jsnpritchett]

3 minutes ago, m0nkey said:

Damn, that's a name I haven't thought of in a while

[Taylor]

I miss mulwin.

[totdprods]

The stats look the same right now, but I still think this Adell (and last year’s) is a much different version than what we saw before.

He may have more “history” than the other youngsters, but he’s still a kid and I think this is a prolonged cold snap as his newest iteration adjusts to the big leagues. Give him some time. If this continues into late July, he’s probably cooked, or at least not finding things here.

Adell, Schanuel, Neto, O’Hoppe and maybe even a teeny tiny bit Moniak have had prolonged stretches of success this year, with some brutal cold snaps as well. This is typical for young players still adjusting. I’m encouraged that they haven’t been bad all year. They have had 100+ PA stretches where they’re putting up .800+ OPS if not more. That’s a great sign. We have not seen periods of success from young bats in their first seasons to that level in a long time. They’re going to slump. They’re going to have to learn how to make adjustments when the league does the same. That’s what makes them everyday big leaguers. We are gonna see that a lot this year. 

Since he got hurt last year when Trout when down, this is really the first shot the “new” Jo has had at everyday playing time. We can’t write him off after a few weeks of bad play, not after it was preceded by a few weeks of him looking like he finally found it. Give these guys time. They’re not bad…yet. Just inconsistent.

Edited June 18 by totdprods

[Angelsjunky]

29 minutes ago, totdprods said:

The stats look the same right now, but I still think this Adell (and last year’s) is a much different version than what we saw before.

He may have more “history” than the other youngsters, but he’s still a kid and I think this is a prolonged cold snap as his newest iteration adjusts to the big leagues. Give him some time. If this continues into late July, he’s probably cooked, or at least not finding things here.

Adell, Schanuel, Neto, O’Hoppe and maybe even a teeny tiny bit Moniak have had prolonged stretches of success this year, with some brutal cold snaps as well. This is typical for young players still adjusting. I’m encouraged that they haven’t been bad all year. They have had 100+ PA stretches where they’re putting up .800+ OPS if not more. That’s a great sign. We have not seen periods of success from young bats in their first seasons to that level in a long time. They’re going to slump. They’re going to have to learn how to make adjustments when the league does the same. That’s what makes them everyday big leaguers. We are gonna see that a lot this year. 

Since he got hurt last year when Trout when down, this is really the first shot the “new” Jo has had at everyday playing time. We can’t write him off after a few weeks of bad play, not after it was preceded by a few weeks of him looking like he finally found it. Give these guys time. They’re not bad…yet. Just inconsistent.

This is a very glass-half-full take...I think what you are saying is that we're at a low point right now which is why his stats are so bad. I dunno, maybe?