With today being a day off for the Birds, I looked at a few statistics and I noticed that Adam Jones is quietly having a heck of a year. At approximately the quarter pole of the season, Jones is hitting .289, with 5 homers, 24 RBI, 12 BB, and only 29 K's. That in itself might not appear to be overly amazing, however again keep in mind that we're only 1/4th of the way through. Using the home run stat, that would mean that assuming the rest of the season plays out the way the first quarter has Jones would have 20 on the season. Given that he had 19 the last two years (with his 2009 being cut short by injury, that's about par for the course, right? Perhaps, however let's keep in mind that homers don't necessarily make the player. Again, if you take his RBI total and multiply it by four, you end up with 96 RBI on the year which would be 37 more than 2010.
Personally I would argue that the RBI total might be more important than the homers. When Jones was aquired by the Birds they thought he'd be a home run guy. While he's certainly shown traces of being that kind of player at times, right now it appears that he's just going to be one of those steady kind of players that can hit for some power here and there, but will consistently get on base when his team needs him. To me, that speaks louder than bopping 50 homers. If you come up to bat with runners in scoring position and you get a base hit, you've got two RBI. Furthermore, Jones has hit in various positions throughout this season and last (mainly due to injury). When he was in the six and seven holes, he was coming up a lot with the bases empty (potentially because they had been cleared by the middle of the order). So if Jones would hit a solo HR, that was certainly helpful however it's only one run and one RBI.
In 2010 Jones had 69 RBI in total, so barring a significant slump or injury he's well on his way to shattering that. Having said that, the most he's ever had in one season was 70, and that was in 2009 when his season was shortened by injury. However I think that this time around he has better talent around him which will give him more opprotunities to drive in runs. But for those of you who do in fact dig the longball, also keep in mind that as the weather starts to heat up balls will start flying out of ballparks more and more. And I'm not talking about heat in terms of temperatures in the 70s and 80's like we saw this past weekend. I'm talking 90's with humidity folks. And again, Jones has a better team around him now, which might mean that he'll see some better pitching and have the opprotunity to hit more homers. While it's doubtful that this will be an MVP-type season for Adam Jones, it's looking like he certainly might have the chance to turn more heads. We certainly love him in Baltimore; that goes without saying!
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