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In an ugly loss Tuesday night, the silver lining was a 1-for-3 night from Willy Adames, including a double and a walk. It was a sign of life, amid what has been a desert of production for the slugger. He's lived a tale of two seasons this year. Through May 31, he was hitting .256/.335/.453, with solid strikeout and walk rates and a hard-hit rate over 40%. Since then, he's cratered. In 35 games since Jun. 1, Adames is at .198/.304/.317, striking out close to 24% of the time and with his hard-hit rate down to 35.5%. Nothing's working.
As much as he tries to be a well-rounded hitter, when Adames is at his best, he's a home run guy. He lifts the ball, and puts it close to the fences, if not over them. Early this year, when he was going well, he not only hit for actual power, but was robbed of would-be extra-base hits at the wall multiple times. Since Jun. 23, though, Adames hasn't hit the ball even 330 feet in the air.
Not hitting home runs is one thing. Not hitting even warning-track fly balls is another. Adames is not right at all, and as he's become more aware of the issue, the problem is only getting worse. He had a hard-hit rate of nearly 49% and an OPS of .826 on pitches in the lower third of the zone through June 23. Since then, the hard-hit rate is under 31%, the OPS is .367, and worst of all, he's virtually given up on that part of the zone.
Focusing on the upper half of the zone has been Adames's way of compensating for a swing he knows is out of whack. Unfortunately, it's made more of his hard-hit balls come off the bat at a lower trajectory, eating into his power.
You can see the problem in the way he swings at low pitches, when he does so. Early in the season, when he was doing damage on those offerings, it was by driving cleanly through the ball. He was looking for the ball down in the zone, and when he got it, he was able to put his 'A' swing on it, attacking center and right-center field.
When he's right--when he's covering the whole zone, with an adaptable but quick swing--Adames can turn on and pull that ball on the upper or inner half, but strides right through the ball and stays closed on those pitches down. Recently, though, he's pulling off those balls, leading to weak contact on the ground to the left side.
The margins that separate success and failure in baseball are shockingly small--sometimes cruelly so. Adames isn't a totally different hitter, but he's a far, far less effective one right now. He's a little bit off, and the efforts he's made to counteract his struggles have, instead, only magnified them.
With more called strikes because of his diminished aggressiveness, more whiffs because he's unable to cover the whole of the zone, and less production because the long fly ball is missing from his game, Adames continues to scuffle. Hopefully, Tuesday night was the beginning of a turn in the right direction, but it's been a brutal six weeks for the Crew's beloved leader and frequent cleanup man.
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