With fewer strikeouts and more line drives, Adam Jones off to a sizzling start

We sure don't have enough at-bats or a large enough sample size to fully analyze why Adam Jones is off to such a blistering start at the plate.

But looking at some of his plate discipline stats from FanGraphs, there are a few trends developing through 12 games for Jones.

So far, he is striking out much less, swinging a bit less at pitches outside the strike zone, hitting a higher percentage of line drives and not missing hittable strikes.

Jones struck out in 19.5 percent of his plate appearances last year and that percentage is way down to 8.7 percent as he has fanned just five times this year.

In 2013, Jones swung at 44.9 percent of pitches outside of the strike zone. That dropped to 42.1 last year and is at 40.5 for 2015.

Jones' line drive percentage has gone way up, from 17.5 percent last year (and 18.7 in his career) to 26.3 percent so far in 2015.

As for his inside the strike zone contact percentage, that is up from 83.3 percent last year to 94.6 percent in 2015. When you throw one over the plate to Jones right now, he puts it in play and at a greater line drive rate than ever.

But is he seeing more pitches and working the count better? Nope. Last year, he averaged 3.64 pitches per plate appearance and this year, he is at 3.46, which would be a career-low.

All these numbers are fun to track and discuss, but again, with this small of a sample size, we can't draw too much from them.

But the Jones Show has been fun to watch, no matter how you analyze his great start.

During a nine-game hitting streak, he is batting .571 (20-for-35) with two doubles, five homers, 11 runs and 14 RBIs.

He is 6-for-8 with two homers and four RBIs against left-handed pitching. Jones is batting .556 (5-for-9) with a homer and 10 RBIs when batting with runners in scoring position.

Right now, he is showing that he is capable of carrying this team on his back. They scored a season-high eight runs on Sunday and he drove in five of them. He already has six multi-RBI games.

Jones leads the American League or is tied for first in five stat categories:

* Batting average - .459 (first)
* Homers - five (tied for second)
* RBIs - 16 (first)
* Hits - 21 (first)
* OBP - .490 (third)
* Slugging - .848 (second)
* Extra-base hits - 8 (tied for first)
* Runs - 12 (tied for first)
* Total bases - 39 (second)

More notes on the Orioles:

* The Orioles are 7-1 in their last eight games at Fenway Park, outscoring Boston 46-24.

* Caleb Joseph has a six-game hitting streak, batting .526 (10-for-19) with three multi-hit games during that time. He is 4-for-7 when batting with runners in scoring position overall this season.

* Over the last six games, Orioles starting pitchers are 3-0 with a 2.81 ERA.

* In this series, O's pitchers have allowed just seven runs and 17 hits. The Red Sox were averaging 6.2 runs per game when the series began.

* The Orioles have homered in a major league-best nine consecutive games. They've hit 15 in that stretch and 19 on the year.

* The O's have 19 homers in 12 games this April. Last April, they hit 17 in 23 games and Nelson Cruz hit six of them.

Repeating what I've felt and written about here many times the last few months: Homers will not be a problem for this team. They are hitting them at a great rate right now and that is without J.J. Hardy and Matt Wieters. My latest post on that topic came about a week before the start of this season.