Notebook: Checking in on Jo Adell and a Luis Rengifo update

TEMPE, Ariz. — With Mike Trout moving to right field, Jo Adell now finds himself in the thick of a battle for the Angels starting center fielder job.

The former blue-chip prospect played in parts of each season with the Angels from 2020 to 2023 but struggled both in the batter’s box and in the field. Adell played in a career-high 130 games in 2024 and showed flashes of the player he was projected to be when he was drafted back in 2017. 

Adell started the season on fire, hitting .316 with a .979 OPS in his first 23 games. He struck out 22.2% of the time and held an 11.1% barrel rate. The 22.2% strikeout rate was exactly league average and 10% less than his career strikeout rate. The success was short-lived though, because from May 1 to July 31, Adell hit .163 with a .586 OPS and his strikeout rate in that span jumped up to 30.6%. 

With the possibility of another MLB season slipping away from Adell, he made a change to turn his season around. Adell began using a toe tap at the plate instead of a leg kick, and he began seeing similar results to the start of the season. 

“(The toe tap) cleaned up a lot of my contact rate with fastballs in the zone,” Adell said. “For me, it's about what can I go to the plate every single time and really get to that position that I want to be able to attack the zone and have success. Right now it's something that we're going to continue to go with.”

The results were immediate. Adell hit .277 with a .816 OPS and struck out at a league-average 22.8% in August. An oblique strain in the first week of September put an end to his season just as he started to turn a corner. 

As for this spring, Adell has kept his toe tap except for a couple of at-bats but started out 0-for-9 before having a conversation with manager Ron Washington about being more aggressive at the plate. Since that conversation, he’s 6-for-22 (.272). Spring training stats don’t hold much weight, but the aggressiveness at the plate does for Adell.

“I was really focused on decision-making at the plate and was a little more passive than I normally would be,” Adell said. “(Washington) just pulled me off to the side and told me to get a little more aggressive and that's where I do my damage.”

On the other side of the ball, Adell is switching positions to center field right after he finally found his footing in right field. Defense has always been a problem for Adell, but he cleaned up his jumps a little bit and it translated to an Outs Above Average (OAA) of one in right field last season, good enough to make him a Gold Glove finalist.

As he moved to a new position, Adell began camp focused on his jumps and being aggressive. He said he was hesitant at first about which plays were his, but throughout the spring, that problem has dissolved. Now, the priority is on his jumps. 

“I want to be able to get better jumps,” Adell said. “I think in the past I've gotten away with having a little bit later jump off the ball and being able to make up for it in the corners. But in center field, the jumps matter, and getting to the ball in a timely manner is important. That's something that I'm working on at (batting practice) every day is just my jump and my ability to get off the ball.”

Adell said that both first base coach Bo Porter and third base coach Eric Young Sr. have been a huge help in his transition to center field. On top of the normal conversations in the outfield, Porter and Young Sr. go through film with Adell every day to break down his jumps in the outfield and Adell gives a lot of credit to them for making the transition to center field smooth.

LUIS RENGIFO UPDATE

Luis Rengifo is still nursing his hamstring issue but participated in some defensive work yesterday and got five at-bats in an exhibition game against the Asian Breeze today. Rengifo originally labeled it as a cramp on March 4, but he has yet to appear in a spring training game since and Washington said they were going to “back off” for a few days on Sunday. 

Because of the hamstring issue and an illness, Rengifo has been limited to just one official game this spring and that was on February 28. Washington said that Rengifo is behind this spring and expects him to get more at-bats in any way possible.

“I’d like to see him get about 40 (at-bats), and I think he can get that before he gets out of here,” Washington said. “We're going to have to ramp it up by having him in the backfield, taking at-bats, maybe go to the minor league and get some at-bats.”