He doesn’t seem concerned — should we be?
All eyes have been on Willy Adames since he signed a record-setting contract with the San Francisco Giants in the off-season.
Typically, when you shell out for something you’d like to see results back-up the decision you made — preferably sooner rather than later. No one buys a lawn mower anticipating that it will need a month to limber up before it starts functioning properly. Free Agency isn’t a trip to the hardware store. The dynamics of buyer-and-product is a little more convoluted. That messy human element requires patience, an understanding that a baseball contract is an investment, a relationship even. Time is required. Time is also relative. 7-years is a long trip, but so is a month — longer still when it’s been weeks of swings-and-misses, end-of-the-bat contact, and opposite field singles.
Adames appears as laid-back as can be when considering the dismal start. His -5 Batting Run Value is in the 14th percentile and is lugging around a -0.6 fWAR. But, when talking to Maria Guardado after Monday’s 5-2 win over the Brewers, it was pretty clear where his priorities lie. He wants to do well, but he understands there are other ways to contribute to a winning ball club. Any number of post-game interviews and clubhouse reports corroborate that Adames is in fact flush with intangibles, and the early season success can be traced back to his signing.
But man can not survive on vibes alone. Nor do I think this Giants team maintains their quality of play just on Adames’s wide grin and suave demeanor.
I can’t imagine the pressure that comes with a $182 million check, and while Adames reiterated that he tends to start slow, there’s got to be a frustrating itch festering beneath the surface. Any competitor wants to prove they’re worth the price paid.
So have there been tremors alluding to an imminent breakout? Or is something else going? Step one is to check out how this April compares to previous years’.
Here are his first month career splits from Fangraphs:
First off, I disagree, Willy. I would not consider your last two starts in Milwaukee as “slow.”
By the end of April 2024, his slash line was at a solid .270/ .369/ . 441 with a well above league-average 128 wRC+ (130 PA). All of those numbers (except for the slugging percentage) were higher than his end-of-year marks. His offensive production to kick-off the year has actually been above the league average for the last three seasons.
The stand-out concern so far in 2025 has been the lack of power. He’s come through at times with some adaptable swings directed towards right field, which is encouraging to see from a hacker like Adames, but he got the deal he got because of his extra base potential. The .269 ISO and .075 ISO, with just five extra base hits to his name (4 2Bs and a homer), are the lowest in any of the Aprils of his career. You’d have to go back to 2021 and his 39 wRC+ to find a worse start than his current 54 wRC+.
These current numbers look similar to what he posted over his last days as a Tampa Bay Ray before being traded to the Brewers. The good news is that he turned things around after that horrendous beginning, lifting his batting line to .262/.337/.481 with a 120 wRC+ by the end of that season. Was it the Midwestern air that precipitated the change? I hope not, because San Francisco famously doesn’t have any of that.
While the on-field results are far from satisfactory, there isn’t anything noticeably off about the quality of Adames’s contact. His Hard% on Fangraphs is higher than it was last season and similar to what it was in 2023. Line-drives, balls on the ground and skied in the air — nothing jumps out about the rates around types of balls-in-play either.
One of the more significant year-to-year differences I found is his bat-speed. It’s nearly two ticks slower than his average last season (73.6 MPH in ‘24, 71.3 MPH in ‘25). The Fast Swing rate (a swing faster than 75 MPH) has been halved, down from 33.2% to 15.3%. Now I can’t determine if his swing was slower in April than the overall average, but the fall-off from the 2024 rate to what it is at the start of 2025 is revealing.
According to Baseball Savant, the difference between fast-swing and a not-fast swing is the difference between a .609 SLG and a .369 SLG. In a word: BIG. Fewer fast swings means fewer baseball clobberings and home crowd applause and more routine fly-outs and furrowed brows as one returns to the dugout.
Bat speed does not necessarily mean a player is only hitting to their pull-side, but it does seem like they are related for Adames. Is he getting bamboozled by pitch-mix? Is he having trouble picking up the baseball out of the hand? Is his lower half out of sync with the top? Has he overly embraced the opposite field approach? Hard to say — perhaps you, dear reader, has a better sense of the situation. All I know is the bat ain’t jumping off his shoulder, nor is the barrel finding the baseball. His Pull-% is way down, and based on 2024’s spray chart, that’s the direction his power runs.
The good news: these numbers are mutable, as flimsy and inconsequential as an empty chip bag if a stiff breeze of offense starts to blow. April isn’t even over yet. There’s a week left of potential extra base hits to rescue some of these dismal averages.
More good news: the Giants are playing well, which takes some of the pressure off and cools some potential scrutiny that’d be directed Adames’s way if the team was scuffling.
That said, I’m done waiting. Let the Adames Era begin, please.