Was Jo Adell’s 2025 Breakout a Fluke? What the Statcast Metrics Say

Jo Adell has taken a big step backwards at the plate in 2026 and his numbers are starting to mirror those of 2023 and 2024. At this point it is fair to wonder if his 37 home run performance in 2025 was simply a career high and an outlier rather than a sign of his true talent.

Every player has a career best year. The Angels and their fans were certainly hoping that Jo Adell was figuring something out at the age of 26, not peaking, but let's see of there's more under the hood of Adell's anemic wRC+ of 80.

Jo Adell is both striking out and walking less than ever before.

An abundance of strikeouts and lack of walks has always been an issue for Jo Adell. After all, in order to hit for power one must first actually hit the ball. The good news here is his 23.6% K rate in 2026 is lower than the 26.4% clip at which he struck out last season. That is still in the bottom third of MLB hitters, but just barely, and a notable improvement.

It is logical to think a guy who is striking out less often has learned better pitch recognition skills. A player with better pitch recognition walks more often. But that is not the case for Adell. Already well below average at getting free passes, his 2.7% walk rate is in the bottom 1% of MLB hitters.

In short, Jo Adell is putting the ball in play roughly 73% of the time which far exceeds his career average.

Jo Adell is no longer crushing the ball despite having elite bat speed.

This is a really interesting paradox. On the one hand, Adell's bat speed is in the top 2% of baseball but yet his ISO (slugging percentage minus batting average) is down from .249 to .145 this season.

His hard hit rate is in the 71st percentile and his average exit velocity of 90.0 MPH is in the 78th percentile. So he is hitting the ball harder than most of his peers. Those numbers are down from the 87th and 86th percentile ranks of 2025 by quite a bit, though.

Is Adell the victim of bad luck or have pitchers figured him out?

The metrics definitely state the former is the case but it may be due to the latter to some degree.

In 2025, Adell squared up balls at a 19.8% rate, good for the bottom 6% in the game. Yet he still managed to crush 37 home runs. This season, he is squaring up 19.2% of pitches, which is about as close to 2025's number as he can get.

Add in the fact he is whiffing less often than he did last year (26.2% in 2026 to 28.5% in 2025) and it truly is a puzzling picture.

In short, Adell is hitting more balls than he did last year, missing fewer, yet generating a lower exit velocity by nearly one mile per hour and walking less. That is the definition of a batter who is going after pitcher's pitches and generating weak contact. Or ate least contact that is much weaker than last season.

Jo Adell's expected numbers look better than his actual numbers.

Angels fans looking for optimism can point to Adell's expected production. Based on his overall metrics, the Angels right fielder should be batting .268 and slugging .457; a notable gain over his actual numbers of .232 and .378.

Generally speaking, the expected numbers and the actual numbers tend to look pretty similar over a large sample size. With the Angels a little under halfway through the season, Adell's second half could look a lot better than his first half based on the underlying metrics.

That is the optimistic view and one with data to back it up. However, if he does not turn it around in a big way his 2025 will look like a major outlier. At that point the Angels will need to recognize that Adell is not part of the future and look to replace him sooner rather than later.

Off the field and in the community, Jo Adell is a great person and teammate. He gives time and money to charity. He speaks to kids about the need for education. He is the type of player a franchise likes to keep in the fold and have represent them.

But this is a results business and Adell's results have been good for one season and bad for several others.

Add us as a preferred source on Google