LA Angels Thursday News Crash: Spring Breakout

Jo Adell, OF, Los Angeles Angels

If Adell breaks out this year, or ever, it’ll be one of the great prospect comeback stories of the last decade, as it looked like the Angels had completely messed him up by rushing him to the majors in 2020. He played regularly for the first time in 2024 and had his best season by any measure, getting up to 0.9 WAR and cutting his strikeout rate to a manageable (if high) 27.9 percent with a 90 wRC+ that was his best in any season, even the partial ones. He even played solid-average defense.

His 2024 might have been his breakout season if he’d just held serve against fastballs; he didn’t hit them as hard last year as he had in limited time in 2022-23, even though he whiffed on them less. I’m assuming that’s just noise, and he’ll see improvement there that more than makes up for any lost ground against offspeed stuff, and that his overall trend of making more contact, making more hard contact, swinging less and swinging-and-missing less will continue.

Logan O’Hoppe, C, Los Angeles Angels

He already broke out last year with a 2.7 bWAR season and 20 homers in his first truly full season in the majors. He did wear down in the second half, though, going from .276/.328/.472 at the All-Star break to .196/.266/.312 after it. I expect him to hold his production better this year, between just having the physical and mental experience of playing a full season before and the presence of Travis d’Arnaud as a backup who can give O’Hoppe more days off from catching.