LA Angels Prospects: Jo Adell still not quite ready for promotion

When the LA Angels brought Jo Adell up to the Major League club last year, it didn’t go as planned.

He had some rough moments on defense, and struck out quite a bit (55 times in 38 games).

The Angels decided that they’d give him more time to develop in Triple-A.

Jo Adell has delivered mixed results in Triple-A this season in the LA Angels organization.

In Salt Lake, Jo Adell has struck out 70 times in 46 games (all stats in this article are as of June 30th) for the LA Angels Triple-A affiliate.

If he struck out that often in the Major Leagues, he’d be on pace for 246 strikeouts over a full season. That’s actually even worse than his 55 strikeouts in 38 games for the Angels last year, which would have added up to 234 strikeouts.

So, he really hasn’t improved in that department, which isn’t good.

We’ve seen his defense get a little bit better, as he’s only made a couple of errors in 43 defensive games this year. His fielding percentage is .977 this year in the Minors, which is an improvement over what he had last year in the MLB (.961).

Also, Adell has been excelling in his abilities to hit for power. He’s hit 16 home runs in just 46 games. That would be on pace for 56 homers in a full 162-game Major League season. Obviously he wouldn’t have hit 16 home runs in 46 games if he was hitting against Major League pitching, but it’s hard not to like what his bat has provided the Salt Lake Bees this year.

He hasn’t been hitting for average, going from a .264 batting average in his 27 Triple-A games in 2019 to .262 this year, but it feels easy to look past that when he went from zero Triple-A home runs in 2019 to 16 this year.

He has improved offensively, and it looks as if he’s improved defensively too. It’s probably still too early to bring him up due to his habit of striking out far too often, but it’s nice to see his power coming along.