Welcome to Week 11 of our Patience or Panic series! If you don’t get what we’re doing by now, you might not ever.
Jo Adell, OF, Los Angeles Angels
Los Angeles Angels outfielder Jo Adell, like poet Walt Whitman, contains multitudes. At first, Adell’s career seemed open-and-shut. Picked 10th in the 2017 MLB draft, Adell flourished in the minors enroute to unanimous approval as a top prospect. Yet those hopes hadn’t manifested until last season. Hitting 37 homers and touting a .778 OPS, Adell seemed to be blooming like a lilac. There were no multitudes. No false starts. He had arrived. Or so everyone hoped.
There is no end to Adell’s mystery. He’s yet to proceed and fill the next fold of his future with certainty. This season, Adell is hitting .243/.283/.392 with just 10 home runs through 65 games. His HR% is halved, his ISO is down .100 points, and his .675 OPS is the lowest it’s been since 2022. Back when Adell was a 23-year-old, yet to be riddled with the complexities of a major-league track record and minor-league dreams.
So, what have we to confide about the continuing contradictions of his being? Well, the simple truth behind his failures starts with his power. Adell’s 2025 revival did not come because he was a complete player. He did not hit for contact or practice discipline. He hit .236, 121st-best average out of 145 qualified hitters, and totaled a .293 OBP, 130th-best out of the same pool of players. Instead, Adell made his peace: He was a power hitter, a slugger. He knew his song and how to sing it.
And to some extent, Adell’s trappings this season boil down to his inability to strike the same note. All of his power numbers, as alluded to, are down. His HardHit% is down, and both exit velocities are seeing drops. But more staggering are his barrel numbers. Adell’s Barrel% last season was 17.3%. This year, it’s 8.9%, a -8.4 change that’s the third-largest year-to-year dip in all of baseball. A not quite as drastic drop appears in Adell’s Barrel/PA, which went from 11.3 to 6.3.
In other words, Adell’s seen his greatest and arguably perhaps only MLB strength taken from him. Yet the contradictions continue, because Adell’s problems are not all his own. He’s gotten incredibly unlucky, evident by the -.069 difference between his slugging percentage and his xSLG. That mark is the 23rd-highest in all of baseball. We see a similar lack of luck with his batting average, xBA, wOBA, and xWOBA. The gap between the latter two is the 18th-highest in all of baseball.
Now, that doesn’t absolve Adell. Nor does it explain his other disparities. What might explain things is the way pitchers are attacking him. In 2025, Adell thrived against fastballs and breaking balls, hitting 34 of his 37 home runs against them. The remaining three jacks came courtesy of offspeed pitches, which Adell struggled against, hitting just .182 against them.
The numbers talk honestly, and opposing pitchers heard them in the offseason. Adell is seeing 3.7% more offspeed pitches this season and still can’t hack them, hitting an even worse .054 with a .054 slug. He has just two hits against them. Two! Both were singles. And Adell isn’t just getting out against them, he’s getting himself out. He touts a 38.6 Whiff% on offspeed pitches, and 44.9 Whiff% on all changeups, 14th-highest among all qualified hitters.
Yet Adell is oddly striking out less than ever, with a 23.5 K%. Keep in mind, his career K% entering 2026 was 30.2%, 24th-highest in baseball from 2020 to 2025. Couple that with elite bat speed, and his expected numbers, and if someone so wishes to walk with him, they’ll find reasons to.
The Verdict: Keep a candle burning. Adell, despite all his seasons, is still 27. He hasn’t remade himself. He’s tried to stay true to what inspired so much a year ago. If he can figure out offspeed pitches, or somehow persuade opponents to throw less of them, he can be the thumper he needs to. But it’s easier said than done, and perhaps, it’s proved already too late.
Masyn Winn, SS, St. Louis Cardinals
St. Louis is rising. The hometown Cardinals are outperforming, former top prospect Jordan Walker is blossoming, and rookie JJ Wetherholt rocks. The franchise finally has a direction forward instead of staying in the mud. There finally seems to be salvation for the Redbirds, one full of promise and youth and forward-thinking.
Except there’s one flaw in the machine. Masyn Winn, the team’s 24-year-old, would-be, probably should-be shortstop, is providing more pessimism than optimism. Through 56 games, Winn is hitting .236/,318/.322 with a .640 OPS and a 86 wRC+. As far as counting numbers go, he’s hit just two home runs, 24 RBIs, eight doubles, and two triples with 52 strikeouts.
Not impressive at a glance. But not altogether too dissimilar from the hitter Winn’s been so far at the Major Leagues. In his first three seasons and 316 games, Winn hit .252/.304/.376 with a .680 OPS. Comparatively, the average is down; the OBP is higher now than it was then. Broadly, though, Winn hasn’t regressed. He’s a little worse than he’s been, and who he’s been hasn’t been all that stellar. That’s not slander; It’s a fact. Considering Winn’s pedigree, there were higher expectations. That was especially true after 2024, when Winn posted a .730 OPS with 15 home runs and 32 doubles. That player from the past, 2024 Winn, only cements how different a player he is now.
Yet, from a pure hitters profile, Winn isn’t all that different from who he was in 2024. Compare both Baseball Savant pages. They’re not that different. Winn still isn’t an exit velocity machine. He doesn’t hit the ball hard. His Barrel% ranked him in the 10th percentile; This year, he ranks in the 12th percentile. It’s not as if Winn’s lost his superpower. This isn’t Adell, and his inability to hit for power all of a sudden. It’s a hitter who’s never looked great under the hood and is only now showing smoke.
Within that haze, though, lie some answers. First, his power numbers are all down. His Barrel% is down 1.7%, his Barrel/PA is down 1.4, and his exit velocity is down by two whole ticks. Winn’s ISO is .087, the 10th-lowest in all of baseball, and .061 points worse than what it was in 2024. And Winn isn’t just lacking power, he’s lacking hard contact. His 31.9 HardHit% is a career-worst, the 23rd-lowest out of every qualified hitter this season. This smoke is black. Comprised of charcoal and incomplete combustion.
Winn’s problems don’t extend there. Unlike Adell, he’s not unlucky. There’s only a -.012 difference between his average and xBA, and a +.004 discrepancy between his slug and xSLG. Even Winn’s wOBA isn’t that far off, only -.006 points lower than his xWOBA. He’s played to his expectations. This isn’t bad luck. It’s all his.
One thing in particular that Winn has to wear is his struggles with breaking balls. Winn has consistently seen the pitch type at roughly 30% each year. Yet still he can’t hack it. A .149 average against in 2023, a .200 average in 2025, and a .191 average this season. The only year exempt from those struggles is, well, 2024. Curveballs especially give him fits. Winn’s floundered against the pitch every season except, well, go ahead and guess. Otherwise, it’s a .143 average, .107 average, and a .071 average this season. The story is no different against sweepers. His average against the pitch peaks in 2024 and is then always at or beneath the Mendoza line.
To illustrate further, Winn has a launch angle of 1 degree against curves. One. Against sweepers, he has an average exit velocity of 81.4.
Speaking of poor launch angles and slow exit velocities, it’s time to address Winn’s other 2026 sin: His GB%. When looking at Winn’s numbers, this jumps out most of all. Right now, he touts a 46.3 GB%. So much goes into the dirt. His FB%, meanwhile, is 15.6%, the fourth-lowest in all of baseball. The -8.8 difference between that FB% and his 2025 FB% is the sixth-highest year-to-year change in baseball. It’s staggering. And it, along with his .27.5 LD%, could be explained by Winn hitting the ball straight 43.1%, a new career-high. Except Winn isn’t making harder contact or hitting for contact.
The Verdict: Give Winn, despite all this, some grace. He’s 24. He’s coming off a season where he played through a meniscus tear until the Cardinals shut him down. Some players take longer than others. However, that doesn’t mean the fruit of that labor needs to come at your expense.
Alec Bohm, IF, Philadelphia Phillies
Much has been made about Philadelphia Phillies third baseman Alec Bohm, both in the present and in the past. As for the latter, there’s the 2022 lip-reading fiasco and its aftermath. That all faded, though. Or Bohm made people forget. From 2023 to 2025, he hit .280/.330/.433 with a .763 OPS, 46 home runs, and 253 RBIs. He became a one-time All-Star, a stalwart, and even more strangely, accepted by the home crowd he used to deride.
As for the former, the now, there’s Bohm’s not-so-subtle lack of success. Through 61 games this season, Bohm is hitting .224/.282/.359 with a .640 OPS and 77 wRC+. That OPS would be a career-worst, and that wRC+ would be the second-worst in his career. His one calling card is his run production: Seven home runs, 30 RBIs, the latter ties him for third-most on the team. He’s chipping in, if nothing else.
Is that all he’ll do? And what’s keeping him from being the anchor he was for three years running? It’s one of many questions plaguing Philadelphia sports talk radio.
To answer the second, let’s look at something obvious: Bohm isn’t hitting the ball with much authority. His Barrel/PA is down, his Barrel% is halved from where it was last year, and his HardHit% is down 4.0%. That’s not to say Bohm’s been or needs to be a slugger. He’s far closer to a contact-first type than anything. But there’s a notable decline in all of these metrics. In fact, there’s been a year-by-year decline in all of these measurements. His HardHit% has gone from the 76th percentile in 2024, to the 66th, and now to the 56th. His Barrel% has gone from the 38th to the 25th to the 16th. From that point of view, this all seemed predictive. He’s been a hitter in active decline in key areas. This is no surprise; It was coming.
Yet where Bohm’s slipped in some places, he’s maintained in others. His Squared-Up%, for instance. It remains elite, ranking in the 96th percentile after finishing in the 93rd and the 95th in 2025 and 2024. There’s also growth in the amount of solid contact Bohm’s making, with a current career-best 9.4 Solid%. Factor that in with Bohm’s growth at the plate, walking more than last year, chasing and striking out less, and the picture muddies. And in that morass, there are contradictions that Whitman and Adell might appreciate.
What goes on beneath that appreciation? What’s dirtying what had been otherwise clear water? Chiefly, it’s fastballs. After thriving against the pitch type for three straight seasons, Bohm can’t buy a hit off them now. He’s hitting .197 against all fastballs, and as such, sees them 7.4% more compared to last year.
Sinkers are a particular problem, and something opponents are pivoting toward. Last season, Bohm saw the pitch 16.8% of the time. Then, he hit .216. This season, he’s seeing it 23.1% of the time and is hitting .186. He’s seeing it more and more and succeeding less and less. But weirdly, he shouldn’t be. Bohm has a .261 xBA on sinkers and a .307 xwOBA. The problem is, he also has a -3 launch angle on all sinkers.
Four-seamers, more specifically, are causing problems. Bohm’s gone from hitting .322 against the pitch last year to hitting .175 against them this season. There’s no silver lining, either. His xBA is .172, meaning he’s lucky to have what little success he already does. One explanation is another continual regression: Bat-speed. Since 2024, Bohm’s bat has become slower and slower, dropping from the 56th percentile in 2024 to the 30th right now. The -0.8 MPH drop from 2025 to 2026 is the 32nd-largest in all of baseball.
Pitchers have realized Bohm can’t catch heat. He can square up as many balls as he wants, walk more, and become better disciplined. That’s great. But they know he’s essentially powerless against the pitch he sees the most. And until that changes, they’ll keep throwing it to him and watching as he does little and less with it.
The Verdict: Caveat emptor. Bohm’s track record was strong enough to rid him of his pariah status. It might be strong enough to entice as a buy-low option. But to be worth it, Bohm would have to revive himself again. Cats have nine lives. At 29, how many does Bohm have left?
