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May 29, 2026; Baltimore, Maryland, USA; Toronto Blue Jays second baseman Charles McAdoo (26) celebrates after hitting his first career hit/home run during the seventh inning against the Baltimore Orioles at Oriole Park at Camden Yards. Mandatory Credit: Daniel Kucin Jr.-Imagn Images | Daniel Kucin Jr.-Imagn Images
In this column, I normally focus on guys who, you know, haven’t actually taken wing yet. But I missed Charles McAdoo after saying I’d feature him, and he really has had an interesting season, so I figured that in spite of 8 PA and a home run with the big club he’d still be an appropriate topic.
McAdoo was a 13th round pick by the Pirates out of San Jose State in 2023. He smashed the low minors and looked good in a brief AA stint before being traded to the Jays at the 2024 deadline in exchange for Isiah Kiner-Falefa. He scuffled down the stretch last year, and had an ugly first couple of months repeating the level in 2025 before finding his footing and slashing .274/.343/.475 over the final 80 games of the season.
This season, he was bumped up to AAA. Although his 112 wRC+ isn’t really an improvement over last season’s overall result, he’s getting there a different way. McAdoo has sliced way down on his swing and miss, making contact 80.7% of the time compared to 71% at a lower level last year. It’s the best rate of his pro career, and a sharp reversal from his previous trend of increasing whiffs as he climbed the ladder. He’s also become more selective, swinging 42% of the time as a Bison compared to almost 48% as a Fisher Cat. As a result, he’s gone from walking 9% of the time and striking out nearly 28% to walking 14% of the time and striking out just 20%. Both are his best marks since A ball by a significant margin. That’s come with a lower BABIP and a bit less power production than he manage before being traded or after June 1st last year.
It’s not obvious what’s allowed him to make that improvement. His swing looks about the same, starting with a closed stance in a low crouch with the bat flat behind his head and using a small toe tap to shift him into a more neutral position before he unloads. If anything’s changed, it looks like he’s somewhat quieted the bat waggle that in past years has sometimes looked like it lead him to start his swing from a different hand angle than he’d like. He may have also reduced his bat wrap a bit, very slightly shortening his swing. It’s a minor tweak if it’s anything.
The results look like they come from a different swing, though. He doesn’t seem to be hitting the ball as hard. His hard hit rate in Buffalo was 37% over a large enough sample to mean something. That’s a touch below average. We don’t have that info publicly available for AA, but scouting reports note that he was putting up plus exit velocities. He also hasn’t cracked 110mph on a ball in play yet this year, unusual for a guy universally agreed to possess plus raw power. In a tiny sample, his bat speed at the MLB level has been right on average. He’s also putting the ball on the ground more and pulling it less than he has in his career, especially since he reached AA.
Maybe the changes are subtle and I’m just not picking them up, because statistically he really looks like a guy who’s cut down and flattened his swing to make more contact. If that is what’s happened, it’s not a bad trade. He’s catching up to high fastballs (his home run was on 94 at the top of the zone), and while his power production has dipped he still has nine home runs across 215 PA. If he can post near league average strikeout and walk totals with 20+ home runs, he’ll have plenty of offensive juice to support a big league role.
He’ll have to hit, because he won’t get into games for his glove or his wheels. He’s played mostly third base in the minors, but while he’s got an athletic build he’s stiff and not very rangy there. He spent more than half his time in Buffalo at first or as the DH. In the long term, he looks like a corner utility guy who can give you passable work at third on occasion, but I don’t think he should be an every day option there. He’s a below average runner, although good instincts and aggression allowed him to steal 34 bases in 40 tries in 2025 and 21 in 25 the season before. It’s not that he brings no value outside the bat, but he’s a guy who does enough elsewhere to allow the bat to get into games rather than someone who can deliver value in multiple facets of the game.
It’ll be interesting to see what McAdoo is able to do with his opportunity in Toronto. With Lenyn Sosa ‘injured’ and unplayable when healthy and Davis Schneider appearing to need a significant reset in AAA, he should get at least a couple of weeks’ run with the big league club. If he does continue to make a decent amount of contact and flash his power, he could add a little jolt to the bottom of a lineup that’s sorely needed it.
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