Law: Willy Adames a strong fit for the Giants, but more is needed to compete in NL West

The San Francisco Giants have been bridesmaids on so many major free agents in the last two offseasons that it felt a bit like a hoax when word came down that they’d signed shortstop Willy Adames, my No. 2-ranked free agent of this winter, to a seven-year, $182 million contract that is also the largest in franchise history. He is an excellent fit for the Giants, who have had a hole at shortstop for several years now and who needed an offensive upgrade.

The Giants scored 693 runs in 2024, below the NL median, and they no longer have Jorge Soler (traded in July) or Michael Conforto (departed in free agency). They also were likely to see a big drop-off at shortstop if they didn’t go and acquire someone.

They got excellent production from Tyler Fitzgerald last year, including near-average defense at short, but all of the available evidence we have says that it’s not sustainable. His wOBA of .357 was well above average, but his batted-ball data point to an expected wOBA (xwOBA) of .292, which is well below average. He struck out 31.7 percent of the time last year in the majors, consistent with most of his minor-league tenure outside of his time in the Triple-A Pacific Coast League, where there are a lot of great hitters’ parks, and in recent years they’ve used the automated ball-strike system at least some of the time. The odds are very good he’s going to see his average and OBP drop this year, and it’s good to see the Giants avoid buying into his 96-game sample with all of the red flags in the underlying data.

It’s not as if they had any other internal options at short, either; they’ve finally moved Marco Luciano off the position, and neither Casey Schmitt nor Brett Wisely has shown enough with the bat to stick as more than an extra infielder. Their options for solving shortstop were limited to Adames, maybe Ha-Seong Kim (although he might not be ready for Opening Day), or a signpost with the word “SHORTSTOP” written on it in crayon.

I did rank Adames as the second-best free agent available, so I am very bullish on his future value, but I didn’t think anyone would go to seven years on him. He’s been a consistent 3-4 WAR player, but never a 5+ WAR player, and a guarantee of $26 million a year for seven years, taking him into his mid-30s, seems to pay him more like the latter.

I worry his high strikeout rates, between 25 percent and 27 percent in each of the last three years, portend a big drop-off in production when he gets to the latter portion of this contract; hitters do tend to lose bat speed in their 30s, and Adames doesn’t have much margin for error in his contact rates. It could be a great deal over the next three years, and an albatross maybe in years 6 and 7, depending really on how quickly age catches up to him — and I don’t think anyone has figured out how to predict that.

Adames alone doesn’t make the Giants a contender; they were 80-82 last year, outscored by six runs on the season, and have lost Blake Snell and Conforto to free agency. They’re also in a brutal division, behind two 2024 playoff teams and another that missed by a single game, none of whom is letting up or taking a big step back on paper, at least.

They should be looking to improve the club over the next three years rather than just for 2024, and the Adames deal fits that timeline. He’s likely to still be at his peak in 2025-27, which are his age 29-31 seasons. If Luciano can stay healthy, he still has significant upside as a hitter; there’s playing time at second base for someone to seize, although I remain skeptical he can handle the infield with the way his body has developed. Fitzgerald is set to see a lot of the second-base reps. Jung Hoo Lee didn’t hit at all before his season-ending shoulder injury, but I expected better, and I know scouts who did, too.

Mason Black could be a fourth starter for them this year. Hayden Birdsong looks like even more than that. Kyle Harrison has at worst No. 2 starter upside, probably No. 1, but we saw last year he’s going to need time and repetitions.

They could end up an 85-win team pretty easily from here, having addressed their biggest deficiency with Adames. (I wouldn’t put Jordan Hicks or Keaton Winn in the rotation, given their injuries, but they seem determined to try it again; maybe signing a fifth-starter type for depth purposes would provide some insurance there.)

That’s a long way of saying I’m not sure they need to do anything else big, and I wouldn’t want to see them make a big signing for an unlikely playoff push this year. If they wanted to sign, say, Max Fried for four to five years to give them a legitimate No. 2 behind Logan Webb, great, because he’d be there for the 2026 and 2027 seasons when this team might be a more realistic contender.

The Milwaukee Brewers get a compensatory draft pick for losing Adames, which should give them three of the top 33 or so selections, and they can just plug Joey Ortiz into the vacated shortstop spot. Ortiz is a true shortstop who played plus defense at third for Milwaukee last year (+8 OAA) and hit .239/.329/.398, right about league average and thus above average for short.

The team that probably should have signed Adames is the Detroit Tigers, a playoff team that is clearly on the way up and should be contenders for the next several years, but that doesn’t have a viable starting shortstop on the roster or anyone close in the minors.

The Tigers’ shortstops hit a composite .190/.238/.315 last year, mostly from Javier Báez (who is a release candidate at this point) and Trey Sweeney, who, playoff heroics aside, had a .269 OBP in the regular season. Adames would have been a perfect fit for them, and other than Ha-Seong Kim, who was a 5.8 WAR player in 2023 before the shoulder injury cut his 2024 campaign short, I’m not sure where else they might turn.

(Top photo: David J. Griffin / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)