Angels News: MLB Analyst Thinks Jo Adell is the Key to a Successful Season for the Halos
The Angels picked Jo Adell with the 10th overall pick in the 2017 draft out of Ballard High School in Louisville, Kentucky. The young star moved quickly through LA's minor-league system, debuting in the big leagues just three years later at age 21.
Unfortunately for Adell and the Halos, the transition to the majors hasn't been smooth. Despite putting up OPS numbers well above .900 in each of the last two seasons in Triple-A, Adell has posted just a .616 OPS in 557 big-league plate appearances from 2020-22.
According to MLB Network analyst and former Astros manager Bo Porter, Adell is a huge factor in whether the Angels have a good season this year.
"Well, when you look at Jo Adell, this is one of the wild cards. As an organization, you can ill afford to miss on your first-round picks, and when you look at that 162-game statistics, it's .215 [batting average], the numbers are not going to jump off the board. But the talent is gonna jump off the board to you, because this guy has unbelievable power, he's athletic, he can do so many things on a baseball field that can help you win games, he just has not put it all together at the major-league level.
"[On defense], you're gonna see bad routes, you're gonna see hesitation. ... [On offense], he has a sweeping hole down and away, which he chases off the plate. But when he ties it all together and he gets the ball elevated, you see that extension and his ability to hit for power. When you look at even the minor-league numbers, the average has never been something that's gonna carry him, but this is a young man that, if he's able to hit mistakes, you can see the OPS in the minor leagues at .920, he's gonna hit for power, he's gonna be able to run the bases.
"And they need him to be a better defender. When you start thinking about the pitchers that they have in their rotation, you have [Shohei] Ohtani at the top, he's gonna strike people out. But once you get past Ohtani, the balls gonna get put in play, so run prevention is gonna become very important for this Angels team, and they're gonna need Jo Adell to arrive, and he needs to arrive right now."
Porter mentions Adell having a low batting average in the minors, and while that's true of 2022, it's not true overall. His career average in the minors is .289, although he was 50 points below that with Salt Lake City last year. He made up for that by nearly doubling his walk rate, but 2022 looks like an anomaly with the low batting average.
Whatever kind of hitter Adell has been in the minors, though, he hasn't shown that in the big leagues yet. And the Halos need him to show up if they're going to be the best team they can be.
