Imagine being 6’2″ tall, and punishing the scale’s needle to the tune of 240 pounds. You’re a linebacker with a bat. Now, imagine you’re able to hit home runs til the cows come home (in this case, probably literally). If you’re first baseman Jake Adams, 6th-round 2017 draft pick of the Houston Astros, you not only hit a ton of taters, but you really don’t know (or care) how many.

“I just don’t like that pressure,” the right-handed Adams said recently in a LandofTen.com interview. “Obviously, we have games to play, so I want to keep as little of pressure on myself as I can so I got to keep going out there and playing my game and do anything I can to help our team win.”

Jake Adams’ team was the Iowa Hawkeyes, who ended their Big 10 season second only to Michigan with an overall record of 39-22 (to Michigan’s 42-17), with their conference record tied for third (15-9).

For the record, the 21-year-old Adams hit 29 homers in 245 at-bats for Iowa in 2017, outdistancing his nearest competitor by 10, and setting the Iowa school HR record (22 in 1986), previously held by John Knapp, who never rose above A-ball in five years as Dodgers property. Adams’ new record works out to one tater every 8.4 ABs, eclipsing the Yankees’ Aaron Judge‘s one per 10.3 ABs (through games of June 19, using Judge’s MLB-leading 23 bombs).

“When you’re getting Adams, you’re getting the power bat; that’s why you’re drafting him,” said MLB.com and MLBPipeline.com senior writer Jim Callis, just prior to the Draft.

Predictably, Adams led the Big Ten with 183 total bases, leaving his home run runner-up, Craig Dedelow, far back with 135. Dedelow was drafted by the White Sox in the 9th round of the MLB Draft, after opting not to sign with the Pirates, following their selection of the center fielder in the 34th-round last year.

Adams’ 14 doubles helped him drive in 72 runs in his 61 games. That RBI total was a conference high by 13. He also, unpredictably, stole five out of six bases, while slashing a frightening .335/.417/.747. In 283 PAs, he walked 29 times, while striking out 57, for a 1.97 K/BB.

Adams’ .335 BA tied him for sixth in the Big Ten this season, while his 82 hits were within one of the conference lead, reached by Hawkeye teammate, shortstop Mason McCoy. McCoy was drafted by Baltimore, and like Adams, in the 6th round. Adams and McCoy tied for the Big Ten lead with 55 runs scored.

Portrait of the Player as a Young Raker

Adams was born and raised in Brandon, South Dakota (a Sioux Falls suburb), attending Brandon Valley High School. As a junior, he hit .398 with five home runs, while also plowing unsuspecting running backs as a linebacker in football. Plus, he earned all-district honors as a center in basketball for the Lynx.

Adams’ power followed him 300 miles to Des Moines Area Community College, where he clobbered 17 home runs as a freshman (with 54 RBIs and 62 runs scored), and 25 for the Bears as a sophomore (2nd in the nation, earning First-Team All-American honors, hitting .360, with 75 RBIs). Those DMACC numbers, combined with his 2017 Hawkeye homer output, gives him a (gulp) 71 three-year total.

Embracing fantasy for a moment (and disregarding the reality of increased pitching rigor as he progresses), inserting those numbers into an average full-season MLB season of, say, 550 ABs, his 71 dingers would yield a Bondsian homer every 7.7 ABs!

Fighting Hawks’ Loss=Hawkeyes’ Gain

Fielding grounders at the first base bag in April 2016, for DMACC, Adams was given the sobering news of the unceremonious dropping of the baseball program for the Fighting Hawks of the University of North Dakota, where the eventual sports studies major had signed to play his chosen sport. Jake Adams’ Division I scholarship had vanished like one of his soaring blasts, minus the high fives that accompany the latter.

“My heart sank,” Adams said, as his mind traveled to his empty feeling that day, in an interview in the March 23rd HawkCentral.com. “What the hell? What am I going to do now? I was literally at a loss for words.”

Unaware of it then, but that was the first link of an unlikely chain of events that led the avid duck-hunter to become one of the most prolific home-run hitters the Big Ten and the Iowa baseball program had seen in decades.

Recognizing Adams’ late spring player-without-a-baseball-home situation, Sean Moore (DMACC’s hitting coach at the time), saw Adams’ anxiety, and remembers reassuring him: “Don’t worry about it. Keep playing. If schools want you, they will free up money.”

The HawkCentral article picks up the story: “The day the North Dakota news broke, Moore — a former Hawkeye — reached out to Iowa hitting coach Marty Sutherland and told him: ‘Hey, you need to get on this guy.’

“Rick Heller, now in his fourth year as Iowa’s baseball coach, liked Adams, who blasted an eye-popping 42 home runs in two seasons for DMACC. But finding money was going to be a problem.

“Luckily for Iowa, everyone else interested in Adams (except his home-state school, South Dakota State) was out of money, too. Adams had walk-on offers from Michigan State, Illinois and Kansas State.

“Heller cobbled together a partial scholarship for Adams, with some funding freed up because incoming recruit Malique Ziegler was taken in the June (2016) MLB Draft, and signed with the San Francisco Giants. Adams happily accepted.

“‘I’d rather take 40 percent at the Big Ten level,’ Adams says now, ‘than a full ride in the Summit League.'”

“Not only does he possess a lot of power, but he’s a really good hitter, too,” Heller said recently of Adams. “It’s not like he goes up there and wastes at-bats.”

The Power and the Story

And, of South Dakota? “I haven’t wanted to go home. This is home for me,” Adams recently reflected. “I’ve made good friends. This is everything I wanted here in Iowa.”

Having officially signed with the Houston organization, June 20, it’s a solid guess that Jake Adams will feel at home at every step along the ladder stretching to the comfortable abode of the Astros.

Crush City: Home Sweet Home.

Related: Astros’ 2017 Draftee Profiles:

RHP J.B. Bukauskas (UNC) #15 Overall, and

Gig ‘Em, Astros! Houston Drafts Texas A&M Pitchers, Corbin Martin and Tyler Ivey,

Father Figure: Astros Draft Trei Cruz, Grandson of Former Astros Star, Jose Cruz, plus

Astros’ 3B Bonanza: Colin Moran (AAA), J.D. Davis (AA), Randy Cesar (A+), and how the organizational hot-corner logjam might effect Alex Bregman