Adams gets a taste of majors
Jordyn Adams does not lack for confidence. The Angels welcomed their firstround draft pick to Angel Stadium on Tuesday, and the 18-year-old outfielder made a bold proclamation.
Not about how quickly he would arrive in the major leagues, or how many home runs he would hit once he got there.
No, Adams took aim at a beloved Southern California institution. He made his first visit to In-N-Out and said the hamburgers were not all that great.
“Nothing that stuck out like I thought it would,” Adams said.
On his Twitter feed, Adams offered this rating: “InN-Out burger: 7 out of 10.”
He said the hype led him to anticipate a burger “like I’ve never tasted before.”
Said Adams: “It was good. I wasn’t saying it was bad or anything, but I expected it to be a little bit better. From what I had seen on Twitter and stuff, I thought it was going to be like some big, blown-up thing.”
Adams said he preferred the burgers from Five Guys and from Cookout, a chain in the South. He graduated from high school in North Carolina. His father is the defensive line coach at the University of North Carolina, and Adams turned down a football-baseball scholarship there to sign with the Angels.
He will report to the Angels’ Arizona training complex Wednesday for rookie ball. He’ll be sharing an apartment with a friend — infielder Jeremiah Jackson, the Angels’ second pick, who had signed and reported to Arizona. The Angels also invited Jackson to Anaheim on Tuesday.
“We’ve got the bed waiting for you,” Jackson told Adams.
In Arizona, perhaps, InN-Out might grow on Adams.
“Everyone that I talked to after said I ordered my fries the wrong way,” he said. “I should have got them animal style. It’s a learning process. It was my first time there.”
Calhoun is getting in the swing
On Monday, in his first game back from the disabled list, outfielder Kole Calhoun batted ninth. He got two hits.
On Tuesday, he batted sixth. And hit a home run. His first since opening day.
Calhoun sat out 15 games because of a strained oblique muscle and used the time to review videos and shorten his swing.
“You can see the changes,” hitting coach Eric Hinske said. “Mentally, he’s better. Fresh, clean slate. We’re just trying to move forward from there.”
In his four full major league seasons, Calhoun never has hit fewer than 17 home runs or posted an onbase-plus-slugging percentage below .725.
He has one home run this season, and his OPS of .390 entering play Tuesday is the lowest for any major league player with at least 150 plate appearances.
The worse he hit, the harder he worked trying to fix it, which he said might have led to the injury.
“I was swinging out of my mind before it happened,” he said. “It was probably bound to happen with the amount of swings I was doing, trying to figure stuff out.”
Short hops
Mike Trout hit 23 home runs through the Angels’ first 73 games, on pace to hit 50 this season. The other player to hit 23 homers in the club’s first 73 games: Albert Pujols in 2015, when he made the only All-Star appearance of his seven-year Angels career. Pujols hit 40 that year. … The Angels claimed right-handed reliever Deck McGuire and assigned him to triple A. McGuire, 28, has been designated by Toronto and Texas in the last 10 days. ... The Angels designated catcher Juan Graterol for assignment.