LOS ANGELES — If this was four years ago, Jo Adell would be pressing.
He is old enough, now, to recognize the mental strain he once put himself through, his top-prospect shine long stained by jittery cups of coffee where he’d too intensely focus on the black ink of his batting average. His 0-for-20s, the Angels outfielder reflected Monday afternoon, would turn into 0-for-40s. And any extended slump brought the ever-present threat of Salt Lake, another extended stint in Triple-A, creeping up behind his shoulder.
“I wish I could have told myself that a couple years ago, is to focus on (the work),” Adell said Monday, sitting in the Angels’ dugout, “and to know that within the process, within time, good things are going to happen.”
Good things have come and gone in 2024, the 25-year-old’s long-awaited major-league breakout finally seeming to materialize through a couple of solid April, only to vanish as quickly as it came. Adell is 6 for 47 in June, and hitting .139 across the last two months. The strikeouts have piled up, and the power has thinned. If this was four years ago, too – or any of the last four years, really – Adell would likely be on a flight back to Salt Lake, sent back to marinate at a level he’s already bested.
But at the end of May, with Adell mired in a 1-for-27 skid, Angels manager Ron Washington gave him a public vote of confidence. He didn’t need to look over his shoulder, Washington told reporters. It’s been more of an implicit understanding than an explicit conversation between Washington and Adell, the former first-round draft pick internalizing that his spot was no longer in danger as long as he punched the clock.
“It gives me a deep breath,” Adell said, “when things don’t go my way.”
Things have gone sideways, frequently, just as they have in the past. In April, Washington ripped Adell for overrunning a base; he’s stolen nine this season, but he’s also been thrown out seven times. His batting average is down to .187, and his OBP sits at .251; he’s hit 12 homers but has struck out in 35% of his at-bats.
Veteran outfielder Kevin Pillar, a mini-revelation since being picked up when Mike Trout was hurt in late April, has been trying to reassure Adell in filling the surrounding edges of his game. And the saving grace, after years of ineffectiveness, has indeed been Adell’s defense.
In previous years, Adell admitted he had struggled with tracking balls hit over his head, making it a consistent point of emphasis with Angels first base coach Bo Porter and third base coach Eric Young. Through three months, he is tied for second among all right fielders in defensive runs saved, his improvement evident in one ninth-inning home run robbery against Houston in late May.
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“I’ve been able to play defense at a really high level, and that’s something we preach here is our defense,” Adell told the Southern California News Group. “And so, obviously coming out, with my level of power, at any point in time I can put one in the seats. I know that’s big for this team.”
“So, over time,” he continued, “I kinda had the idea that it was a spot for me to lose more than it is something that could be taken away from me.”
He’s building a foundation of trust with Washington, Adell affirmed. And after four years bouncing back and forth between the Angels and the Bees, four years that have barely added up to a full season’s worth of at-bats, Adell is firmly entrenched in right field on a rebuilding roster.
“Knowing his job is solidified for at least this year,” Pillar said, “just allows you to be a little bit more confident in the process.”
It’s his first chance as an Angel, truly, to struggle and prove he can dig his way out of it. It might be his last chance, too.