If you Google “Luke Adams”, you get a lot of results that are not related to the baseball player. If you Bing “Luke Adams” you get surprisingly spicy results unrelated to the baseball player. But if you add “baseball” to that search string, yeah baby, now you’re getting what you’re looking for. What are you looking for? A prototypical 3B prospect who hasn’t yet become a household (or even SEO-proof) name. 

Drafted in 2022, the Milwaukee Brewers took Adams in the 12th round from an Illinois high school. A mountain of a young man, Adams looks every bit as you’d hope a third-base prospect would. His staunch 6’4” frame doesn’t have much more room for bulk as he’s already charted at 210 pounds. Watching him online, you know that may even be a light estimate. His swing is long and powerful. He loads the hands back before bringing them back center and swinging. All while also taking a large step towards the mound. When he connects, that 60-grade raw power is unleashed. 

The problem (or should I write “problem”?) is that he’s not often swinging. I’m done with the poetic introduction here and will not bury the lede of my spotlight any further: Luke Adams can hit the ball hard when he wants. He just doesn’t seem to want to swing the bat often. In his 2 full seasons since his draft year, Adams has had walk rates of 17.3% (in ’23) and 18.7% last year. But his swing rates in those two seasons were an absurdly low 35% and 30%! This is fully a swing decision issue, not a swing-and-miss problem. His K-rates were manageable at 22.5% and 21.3% over the same span. And they were backed by improving swinging strike rates in the single digits in both years. 

The selectivity of Adams’s decisions to swing has limited the in-game power he’s realized. As I alluded to, the kid could double as a Disney prince. But he hit only 11 homers in each of ’23 and ’24. The fear that he won’t realize his full power is dragging down the fantasy’s perception of his value and this puts him in a great acquisition position. I mentioned his freakish ability to judge the strike zone, it resulted in a .443 OBP last year in High-A. And when he gets on base, he’s stealing bags left and right. The 30 he stole in ’23 were followed by another 28 last year. Though don’t expect the high number of thefts to continue, he was caught 10 times each year. As the quality of backstops improves, the number will decline at each level. 

Adams has performed similarly in all his low-level stops so far. Meh batting averages are buoyed by okay homer totals, a great OBP, and stolen base tallies. This year will be his first in advanced minors, starting at Double-A. I expect him to continue with his consistently great approach. I want to wait and see if he can unlock some of that raw power by just swinging the bat more. If he successfully does that, I see a very similar fantasy game to Max Muncy. There’s a lot of power that needs to be unlocked first but Luke Adams is a player I would bet on finding that key.

(Chris Knock)