TEMPE, Ariz. — This is a critical spring training for Jo Adell.
Again.
Adell, who was once one of the top prospects in baseball, has seen his stock slip over the past few years of struggles in the big leagues. It’s created the narrative that each new season was his chance to finally turn the corner.
Now, though, the added element is that Adell is finally out of options, which means the Angels won’t be able to send him to the minors. He is still 24 years old and talented enough that he would certainly be claimed if placed on waivers.
“The way the game goes, you’re gonna be where you’re supposed to be at the end of the day,” Adell said. “Right now it’s Angel red. I expect to go out and help the team, so that’s where I’m at.”
New Angels manager Ron Washington said his first look at Adell this spring has shown him a player ready to make changes, though. Washington said he believes Adell is more open to working with coaches than he had been in the past.
“He had been trying to take care of himself, instead of letting him try to take care of himself and us taking care of him too,” Washington said. “I think we got him to the point where he’s allowing us to be a part of what he’s trying to do, instead of trying to do it by himself.”
The Angels have two new hitting coaches, Johnny Washington and Tim Laker. Adell also spent a couple days over the winter working out with former All-Star Matt Holliday, who works for Scott Boras, Adell’s agent.
Adell said Holliday and the Angels’ hitting coaches have encouraged him to simplify the game.
“We’re getting back to the basics of really what it’s all about,” Adell said. “It’s just hitting. It’s about finding a good pitch. It’s the simplicity of it all. We can get caught up in the numbers, but at the end of the day, it’s simple. It’s approach.”
Adell’s approach in the past has seemingly been about power, with little concern for contact.
He has a career .214 average in 619 big-league plate appearances, with a 35% strikeout rate. He has hit 18 big-league homers.
Past hitting coaches have tried to get Adell to shorten his swing with two strikes, telling him he still has so much power that he will still be hitting the ball hard, and possibly still over the fence.
Ron Washington said he’d also like to see Adell use the whole field.
“It’s not just pounding the ball out the ballpark,” Washington said. “It’s about hitting the ball around the ballpark. The whole ballpark. We’re trying to get him in that frame of mind where he starts learning how to use the whole ballpark, because his power is his power. And you don’t need to use it in just one area. And that’s the type of thing we’ve been talking to him about. And as I see it, it’s sinking in.”
Mickey Moniak is also out of options. He and Adell join an outfield mix with Mike Trout, Taylor Ward and Aaron Hicks. It’s possible that all five outfielders could be on the roster.
Trout and Ward are the top two outfielders. Moniak had a good year last year, and Hicks, who is a switch-hitter who does well against lefties, could be a good platoon complement to Moniak.
Where that leaves Adell remains to be seen.
At least he can be confident that he won’t be in the minors.
“I’m just looking forward to the consistency of just being out there,” Adell said. “Being able to play this on a full scale and get myself a full year and an opportunity to go and be on the field every day and in my same routine, same approach and just commit to that approach and see what happens.”
Tony Clark, head of the MLB Players Association, said it “piqued our interest” when the Angels placed seven players on waivers in August, which was a clear attempt to get under the luxury-tax threshold, but as of now they aren’t sure if it’s something that needs to be addressed.
“We’ll examine to what extent it’s a trend and then, come bargaining, if it’s something that we need to have a more tangible conversation about,” Clark said. “But at this point we’re taking notes.”
Clark spoke to reporters after he and other union officials held their annual meeting with the Angels, before Tuesday’s workout. The Angels were the fourth stop as Clark tours all 30 camps.
The Angels made moves that would have pushed them above the luxury-tax threshold just before the July trade deadline, but after the team fell out of the race in August, they reversed course. They allowed five players to go on waivers, and ended up finishing less than $30,000 below the $233 million threshold.
The Angels have consistently come up just short of the threshold, which is precisely the type of behavior the union wants to discourage. The union objects to a salary cap, and the Angels seem to have treated the luxury tax as a hard cap, even though it’s not.
“As we saw over the course of last year, more and more teams understand what it is,” Clark said. “It is a threshold and you have the option to make decisions that go past it. In this last round of bargaining, those thresholds increased. But historically, yes, the Angels have been right up to it and they haven’t haven’t made a decision to go over it in the last 20 years, give or take.”
Clark also said that there didn’t seem to a concern among Angels players that the team is using minor-league facilities for spring training for a fourth consecutive year.
“We haven’t heard complaints at this point,” Clark said. “Obviously from a health and safety standpoint, that’s first and foremost and we haven’t heard that. So we’ll we’ll see.”
Right-hander Victor Mederos will start for the Angels in their Cactus League opener against the Dodgers on Saturday. Washington said Mederos is ahead of the other starters because he was among the first pitchers to throw a live bullpen session. Two of the Angels’ projected rotation members – Tyler Anderson and Griffin Canning – threw live batting practice Tuesday for the first time this spring. …
This year, the Angels have been keeping track of the count as pitchers have worked in live bullpens, as opposed to the more traditional approach of simply having the pitchers throw a fixed number of pitches to each hitter. Washington said it’s part of an effort to help pitchers learn how to more efficiently retire hitters. “The quicker you can get a batter out, you can get deeper in the ballgame,” Washington said. “The time of ‘five (innings) and dive’ or ‘4 2/3 and dive,’ we want to eliminate that.”
