Hot Stove Takes: Giants Make Big Splash With Willy Adames Signing

With new president of baseball operations Buster Posey, San Francisco has finally landed a star free agent.

In Adames, the Giants signed arguably the biggest free agent infielder on the market. / Katie Stratman-Imagn Images

This piece is part of our Hot Stove Takes series, where staff members give quick reactions to the latest notable MLB transactions.

Tom Verducci: With the signing of Willy Adames, the Buster Posey era of the San Francisco Giants (front office edition) is officially off and running. Posey had a huge hole at shortstop and stepped up aggressively in giving Adames a seven-year, $182 million contract. Adames could have waited to see how the post-Juan Soto market shakes out—there was talk he could consider a switch to third base—but San Francisco stepped up with a market value contract, just north of the $177 million, seven-year deal signed by Dansby Swanson with the Cubs.

It’s another signal that Posey is leaning old-school when it comes to rebalancing how the Giants are run after succeeding Farhan Zaidi. Posey already has re-shaped the baseball operations department to reflect that increased emphasis on experience. In Adames, he signed an impact player who is not necessarily an analytics darling, based on middling rates of how hard he hits the ball, baserunning and contact.

But Adames is a consistent run producer and quality defender who loves to play and has an infectious personality. When he arrived with the Rays in a 2014 trade from the Tigers, he made such an impression on teammates that they called him the Pied Piper. He’s a pull-side, flyball hitter with a high launch angle, which makes you think he could lose some pop trading American Family Field for Oracle Park, but Statcast says his 32 homers from 2024 translate to an expected 31 in San Francisco.

Shortstop contracts generally don’t age well, especially with the wear and tear of the position. But on balance, this is a savvy signing by Posey. It fills a massive need, it ends the narrative that San Francisco can’t sign a big free agent and it gives the Giants a leader to build around.

Tom Dierberger: Adames now holds the keys to shortstop at Oracle Park, a position San Francisco thought it filled in free agency two years ago. In December 2022, the Giants agreed to sign shortstop Carlos Correa to a 13-year contract worth $350 million, only to back out of the deal on the day of his scheduled introductory press conference due to concerns that arose over his physical.

Adames's deal is currently pending a physical, too, of course.

While Correa enters the 2025 campaign on the third season of his six-year contract he signed with the Minnesota Twins, it appears the Giants have finally found their cornerstone shortstop. And Posey has proved he can do what Zaidi struggled to accomplish—bringing a star to the Bay Area on a long-term deal.

Patrick Andres: The San Francisco Giants have been waiting years to make a move like this.

They've flirted with top free agents throughout the 2020s—most notably in '22, when they courted both Correa and Aaron Judge. Neither superstar landed, however, and the franchise remained in a free agency slump.

That changed Saturday with the Adames deal. The intriguing move can be viewed through several lenses, but something has been made crystal clear: Posey means business.

Posey has been on the job since Sept. 30, and has had time to watch the Giants' hated rivals—the Los Angeles Dodgers—raise their second World Series trophy in five years. Recall that the 2012 National League MVP is the product of an era when San Francisco was able to meet the Dodgers on equal footing.

One move does not make a World Series contender, and Adames will turn 30 in September. Seen solely as a signal that the Giants have every intention of competing with their deep-pocketed foils, however, it's hard to view the contract as anything other than a diplomatic success.