Angels spring training centerfield battle is starting to heat up

It's tough to draw meaningful conclusions from just a handful of spring training plate appearances, but in one of the most hotly contested Angels position battles, neither of the top two candidates had done much to distinguish themselves, until this weekend.

Jo Adell and Mickey Moniak are battling it out to determine who will win the starting center field job after the Angels announced on the eve of spring training that they will be moving their face of the franchise and long-time center fielder Mike Trout to right field.

That decision put two of the team's most disappointing players in a head-to-head battle to earn the role as opening day starter at one of the most important positions in the game. Despite tantalizing pedigrees, Moniak was the no. 1 overall pick of the 2016 draft while Adell was once ranked as the no. 3 prospect in all of baseball, neither has lived up to their billing thus far in their careers.

Moniak, 26, put up his best season in 2023 where he slashed .280/.307/.495 in 85 games which was good for a 114 wRC+. While that seemed promising, his performance was buoyed by an impossibly high .397 BABIP and his sky-high 35.0% K-rate and minuscule 2.8% walk-rate foreshadowed that his performance would come crashing to the ground. It did in 2024 where, despite improving his K-rate (27.3%) and his walk-rate (5.0%), he slashed just .219/.266/.380 with a 79 wRC+.

Adell, 25, meanwhile, has struggled to stay healthy and productive on the field. Prior to last season, his career-high in plate appearances was just 285 coming in 2022. He followed that up with just 62 plate appearances in 2023, finally finding somewhat of a regular role in 2024 when he played 130 games and racked up 451 plate appearances before being shut down in September with an oblique injury.

Adell's final line in 2024 was .207/.280/.402, however, after some concerted adjustments he showed signs of life over a 125 plate appearance sample from July 30th to September 7th where he slashed .248/.320/.451 with a 117 wRC+. Still, the jury is still out as to whether or not he can maintain that performance.

The Angels are hedging their bets, giving center field reps to a pair of infielders, Tim Anderson and Luis Rengifo, in order to exhaust all options at finding a quality center fielder in the wake of their Trout decision.

Mickey Moniak and Jo Adell got off to slow starts this spring, but are starting to heat up

Fans and the Angels alike hoped that one of these players would have come out of the gates hot this spring, but unfortunately that wasn't the case. Leading up to March 1st's spring training matchup against the Athletics, neither had distinguished themselves.

Adell had been hitless all spring, though he just missed a couple of balls, you could see his timing was off. And then, he broke through in a big way on February 28th in a split-squad game against the Dodgers crushing a ball over the left-center wall for a grand slam. In the video you can see the adjustments he made last season sticking, and he followed up that performance by going 1-for-2 with an RBI on March 1st against the Athletics.

Moniak entered the action on March 1st with a .154/.154/.231 spring training line across 13 plate appearances. He had driven in two runs, but had yet to draw a walk this spring. While not impressive, his performance had been better than Adell's up to this point, and he drew his first walk of the spring while also racking up another RBI in the matchup against the Athletics.

The sample has been small, and the flashes of production even smaller, but we could be arriving at a turning point where one or both of these immensely talented players begin to put it together. If that were to happen, the competition would start to look much more interesting, and the Angels could find themselves on the verge of unlocking their next impact player.

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