Adam Jones is playing uncharacteristically poor, should Orioles fans panic?

April is over, we’re a week into May, and so far Adam Jones is slashing .200/.269/.274 with one home run. That doesn’t sound like the Adam Jones Baltimore is used to, so naturally the question that comes up is, should we be worried?

In my preseason projections, I mentioned that Adam Jones is a bit of an oddity. He swings at everything, has a terrible OBP, and yet somehow keeps hitting the ball. I also mentioned that, because of that style of hitting, Jones is ripe for a massive crash one year.

So have we hit that year? Jones has no power so far, and he just can’t get on base. So what’s going on? Is this the year he crashes? Is it time to panic? Well, let’s look at the statistics.

First off, I should mention that we know Jones was hurt, and he was hurt for a while. For whatever reason, the Orioles in their infinite wisdom decided against putting him on the DL, something that major league baseball teams do that bothers me to no end. I’d much rather a player be out for 15 days and just get healthy than to sit in the injury purgatory known as “day-to-day”.

It’s more than likely that Jones’ injury has affected his hitting to an extent, but even when we look at the stats, things actually look ok. Jones has unfortunately been the victim of some bad luck.

First of all, his BABIP is at .240, which is very low for him (his career BABIP is .310). Also, his HR/FB rate is insanely low, all the way down at 4%. The league average is generally around 10% and Jones’ career average is 15.2%. Now, if he were hitting less fly balls, or hitting the ball softer, this would make sense, but he isn’t. His fly ball rate is about where it always is, and his hard hit rate is about a percentage point higher than his career rate. So he’s still hitting fly balls, and he’s still hitting them hard, he’s just not getting them out of the park yet.

One thing that I’ve found exceptionally interesting is that his walk rate is actually above average (for him) this year. Typically, Jones has a walk rate around 4%, but so far this year, he’s at 7.7%, which is, sadly, the best he’s had in his entire career.

So in summary, Adam Jones is hitting the ball just as much as he usually does, just as hard as he usually does, and is actually showing a bit more patience at the plate than normal. He’s just getting very unlucky with where the ball is falling, his low BABIP and HR/FB rate are huge testaments to that.

So is it time to panic about Adam Jones? Not at all, things will absolutely get better. He’ll probably hit about .270 from this point on, with another 20-23 home runs, and we’ll all see the Adam Jones we’ve gotten used to here in Baltimore.