‘Cats’ Adams defies perceptions
Six-rounder wants to prove he’s more than power hitter
TROY, N.Y. » The perception of Jake Adams that everyone else has is not the perception that he has of himself.
The big boy, bad-gloved firstbaseman that only hits home runs — and to be fair, he does hit a lot of them — isn’t the way Adams defines himself as a ballplayer.
The Houston Astros sixth round pick from Iowa, and current TriCity ValleyCats first baseman is known for his Major League power. He’s hit 34 home runs this season, 29 with the Hawkeyes and five more here in Troy. It’s the type of power that he hopes moves him through the ranks quickly. But there’s more to his game than the flashiest part of it.
“It is unfair,” Adams said of the scouting report on him. “But baseball is kind of an unfair sport. I’ve just got to go out there and work my butt off every single day in and out games and keep proving people wrong.”
Adams has had ups and downs in his month with the ValleyCats. After crushing a mammoth homer in his first professional at-bat, he’s hit just .195 on the season, striking out 30 times and walking just seven. Last week he hit homers in consecutive games, but has only one hit since.
The 230-pound power hitter wasn’t really on the professional radar until this season. He hit 25 homers in his final year at Des Moines Area Community College and was supposed to join the University of North Dakota baseball program for his junior year. But when they shut down the program, it left Adams needing a team without much time to find one. On the reference of a hitting coach, he got some scholarship money
from Iowa, and hit himself into the sixth round of the MLB Draft.
“He has the most power I’ve seen coming out of college by far,” ValleyCats manager Morgan Ensberg said. “We should not take the description of big time Major League power lightly. I would say that it’s elite Major League power. He hits the ball a very long way.” Ensberg says that he gets a quick scouting report on every player that joins his team, but he doesn’t always look or pay attention to it until he sees them play for himself. He doesn’t want what other people have said about the player to influence the way he looks at them.
That’s why he had no idea that Adams has widely been viewed as a defensive liability — a player who had to be a DH at the big league level. But Adams doesn’t agree with that viewpoint and upon learning it, nether did Ensberg, who said it could be MLB caliber.
“I think I was not really viewed as a defensive player,” Adams said. I don’t know why. Not a lot of teams trust me over there for I don’t know what reason.”
Before he got to Iowa, the belief was that his “swing was too long” and wouldn’t translate over into Division I. That’s probably why he was not drafted after his sophomore year at DMACC, despite 42 home runs in two years.
His goal at Iowa was to hit 15 or more home runs, but once that number was shattered early on, he started to hear from MLB scouts interested in drafting him.
Interestingly, the Astros were not one of the more vocally interested teams. But Iowa played their NCAA Tournament regional at the University of Houston, and beat them. Adams hit a couple of big home runs, and a couple weeks later on draft night they were calling to ask if he’d sign at slot value.
He did, and that’s how he got assigned to the ValleyCats. And it’s with this organization that he believes he can make the Majors.
He laments the fact that he’s listed as 250 pounds in most places, despite weighing 230 pounds. He knows his defense is better than any scouting report you’ll read online. He’s proven his swing isn’t too long for the D-1 level, or the pro level, for that matter.
He knows that what people think they know about him isn’t true. Right now the ValleyCats have adjusted his swing a bit to try and keep it in the zone for longer, to give him a better chance to do what he does best.
“I’ve always been kind of the underdog of whatever my whole life,” Adams said. “People saying I’m not good enough, can’t do this, can’t do that. I’ve always proved people wrong, no matter what I’ve done.”