There’s No Need to Worry About Jo Adell
Thirteen months ago, Jo Adell was the second-best prospect in the sport and looked poised to take his place alongside Mike Trout as elite Angels in the Outfield. No one was more excited about Adell’s can’t-miss prospect status than the Angels, it seems, because they rushed him through the minors to make his major league debut last year at age 21. The word “rushed” was carefully chosen here, because he turned out to be severely overmatched against major league pitching. In his first 132 career plate appearances from last season, he hit .161/.212/.266 – which was worth -1.3 WAR in 38 games. By virtue of Weighted Runs Created Plus (wRC+), he was the worst hitter in baseball among those with more than 100 plate appearances. And yet, hope springs eternal.
He’s still very young, and the Angels didn’t have many options to better handle his developmental path last year after the minor league season was cancelled. Still, watching him hit last year was like watching someone swing uncooked pasta at a grain of rice: Entertaining, but ultimately trivial. There’s a little bit of concern whether he can bounce back from a mental standpoint, as struggling this badly would shake anybody’s confidence and maybe even make them press a little too hard. Adell, the only person whose opinion matters on his mental state, doesn’t seem so concerned about that.
Whenever a hyped prospect (or any player, for that matter) doesn’t live up to expectations, the vultures begin circling. On a Zoom conference call with a room full of reporters, Adell was peppered with questions on whether he was “ready” to deal with failure, and his response showed a lot of maturity. “Was I ready? Was I not ready?” Adell posited, “I was gonna have struggles regardless. You don’t know until you’re thrown in the fire… I think if I had to do it all over again, I would go out there and fail again. Because every single time, I’ve bounced back and said, ‘Hey, I’m not gonna let this happen again.’ … At the end of the day, was I ready, was I not? For me, it’s kind of irrelevant.”
There’s no doubt he was indeed thrown in the fire last season, but he’s got the right attitude of learning from his mistakes. For someone who had only ever been successful at every level, it’s quite possible that he could rise to this challenge and come out the other end an even better – and smarter – player. Not every great player in history has hit as well as Juan Soto right out of the gate, especially at an age as young as Adell’s.
His own teammate, Mike Trout, hit a surprisingly weak .220/.281/.390 in his debut 135 plate appearances in 2011 – a close parallel to the 132 Adell has logged thus far – before breaking out for a .326/.399/.564 line the following year. In Mike Schmidt’s first 145 games of action, he hit .197. The Iron Man, Cal Ripken Jr., hit .194 in his first 152 plate appearances. Players have gone on to have superstar-caliber careers after struggling in their first tastes of action, and even though Adell’s start was a lot rougher than most, he could be another success story that future players who struggle can reference.
Adell will most likely be starting his 2021 season with the AAA Salt Lake Bees, especially after veteran switch-hitter Dexter Fowler was acquired to keep the seat warm in right field. Bending the ear of accomplished veteran teammates like Fowler and Trout this spring should be helpful towards Adell’s development, as should getting regular playing time in AAA to work on his swing mechanics and plate discipline.
To that end, he’s already made a few changes in how he sets up at the plate. These changes include keeping his hands higher, ditching his leg kick for a toe tap, and focusing on generating power by rotating his hips. Even with his willingness to adopt new strategies, the most important thing for Adell is that he can get back to being himself. He doesn’t need to be Trout, or Schmidt, or Ripken. He’ll leave it to other players to try and be like him.
-Michael Swinehart
