Angels' horrible stretch somehow coincided with surprising Jo Adell milestone

For Los Angeles Angels fans, watching the team play lately has been pretty painful. The Angels are 7-18 in the month of August and 1-9 in their last 10 games. It is honestly hard to take away anything positive from that kind of stretch especially when talking about the offense, which has completely cratered.

However, one of the brighter spots in the Angels lineup this month has been Jo Adell. While he hasn't exactly torn the cover off the ball, his .277/.333/.446 August line is far better than the rest of his production in 2024. Given that the Angels are looking ahead to 2025 the rest of this season, seeing progress out of Adell is a nice silver lining.

After Adell stole his 15th base in the Angels' seventh straight loss on Wednesday, he also made a little bit of franchise history, which is astonishing when you look back over the last 15 years.

Angels' rough stretch has hidden Jo Adell's very real progress

Obviously a 15/15 season isn't overly rare around baseball and it is easy to identify statistical outliers the more constraints you put on them. However, it is still pretty cool that Adell has been able to show his very real raw tools a good bit this season and that his recent swing adjustments are bearing fruit.

However, it isn't like we haven't seen optimism about an Adell adjustment before. Adell may have all the raw athleticism in the world, but he has a well-earned reputation of showing signs of breaking out only to regress back to bad habits with his swing and approach. Despite his recent progress, he is still hitting .211 this season and his 90 wRC+ (which is not good) is the highest mark he has ever posted in his career.

With three years of team control left, the Angels have an important choice to make with Adell. He almost certainly will remain cheap for a couple of years, and moving on from Taylor Ward could make more sense from a payroll and roster perspective for them. However, Adell is going to have to show that his improvements are going to stick to make his roster spot actually safe.

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