Through the first week of December, the steady trickle of free agency had almost exclusively included pitchers and catchers. Other position players, understandably, seemed to be waiting out Juan Soto’s market, as the price tag for Zoomer Ted Williams reportedly continues to climb. But as the baseball glitterati descend on Dallas for the Winter Meetings, at least one top position player will already have a new home.
Shortstop Willy Adames is now a San Francisco Giant. Adames was the no. 2 overall free agent on Ben Clemens’ Top 50 list, and the first major acquisition for new Giants president of baseball operations Buster Posey. It’s quite a splashy move; Adames’ seven-year, $182 million contract is the largest, by total value, the Giants have ever given out, beating the eight-year, $167 million extension Posey himself signed in 2013.
Records are made to broken.
For the past two offseasons, the previous Giants leadership, under Farhan Zaidi, navigated free agency in a manner commensurate with the club’s semi-contender status. Zaidi came up short in his bid to bring Aaron Judge home, and the club backed out of a $300 million-plus contract agreement with Carlos Correa. But the Giants did wait out the market last winter to sign Blake Snell and Matt Chapman, in both cases to great success in 2024.
Posey, then merely a minority owner, was involved in signing Chapman to a six-year, $151 million extension this September, mere weeks before the 2012 MVP executed his palace coup and shoved Zaidi off the castle parapet. Now, he’s thrown an even bigger contract, including a $22 million signing bonus, at the top free agent infielder on the market. Whatever other worries Posey has for the remainder of the 2020s, the left side of the infield won’t be one of them.
The dollar figure is intriguing; as much as we here at FanGraphs like Adames, Ben predicted a five-year, $145 million payday for the former Brewer. Our median crowdsource estimate came in at six years and $150 million — a higher overall dollar figure but a lower AAV. Seven years and $182 million is $26 million per year, or Ben’s number plus two years at $13.5 million each, if you want to think of it that way.
Another way you could think of it: This is a crapload of money for a player who has never made an All-Star team, never posted a 5.0 WAR season or better, never won a Gold Glove or Silver Slugger, and never finished higher than 10th in MVP voting.
Who could’ve seen this coming?
Well, if you’ll allow a brief digression for a victory lap, I did! One of the very first articles I wrote for FanGraphs, back in September 2022, was about how Adames had quietly played himself into the upper tier of shortstops and was in line to make $150 million or more when he hit free agency.
I bring that up not just because I love being right, but because the logic I followed then (and in my follow-up column from this past March) still holds. And for the Giants fans who understandably aren’t intimately familiar with Adames’ portfolio, that logic answers the burning questions of “Who is this guy?” and “Why the heck is he making almost $200 million?”
Adames is a career .248/.322/.444 hitter. He’s a good defensive shortstop, but not a great one. His 21 stolen bases this past season more than doubled his previous career high. If you’re looking for something that Adames does at an elite level, you’re going to have a long and frustrating time of it. But if you want to know what Adames does well, the answer is: “Basically everything.”
More than that, he’s incredibly consistent. Every hitter has ups and downs within a season, and Adames is no exception. But on a year-by-year level, he’s metronomic. Every year since 2021, he’s posted at least 550 plate appearances, 20 home runs, and 3.0 or more WAR. If you prorate the pandemic-shortened 2020 season to 162 games, that streak goes back six seasons, to Adames’ first full year in the majors.
Even I wouldn’t say that Adames is among the absolute top-tier shortstops in the game, but you don’t have to be that to get paid $26 million a year. Here’s what you might consider Adames’ peer group: shortstops on big contracts, with their WAR in the three seasons leading up to signing their current deals.
Big Shortstop Contracts, Updated
*2020 WAR adjusted to 162-game season
**At time of signing
***In two seasons
Adames loses out to the other players on this table (except Crawford) in peak one-year WAR, but everyone except Lindor has a catch. Seager, Correa, and Story keep getting hurt. Báez left his bat in Chicago. Swanson is still a superb defender, but his offense has regressed since joining the Cubs, perhaps because he picked up the cursed bat Báez left behind. Turner is so streaky he got Phillies fans to feel sorry for him. Bogaerts is on a much longer contract. Witt is a bargain at $26.3 million a year, but the Giants won’t be able to sign a player like him in free agency. (Though if the Orioles keep screwing around and let Gunnar Henderson walk, San Francisco might have a chance to come close in a few years.)
Posey comes into his job with next to no baseball ops experience, and is so new he hasn’t earned the benefit of the doubt. And make no mistake: He’ll have to. Posey is one of the best all-around baseball players I’ve ever seen, and he’ll be able to draw on everything he learned from more than a decade in the majors, as well as two years on the Giants’ board of directors. But playing baseball requires different skills than running a team; when Posey took over the Giants, he had as much formal baseball ops experience as the guy behind you in line at 7-Eleven.
We’ve gone so far around the bend that having an ex-player running a team is a rarity, especially one who hasn’t come up through the ranks as a scout, coach, or other kind of analyst. Furthermore — and I say this intending no undue disrespect — retired superstars like Posey, thrust into analysis or consulting roles, can be impulsive and incurious. It’s up to Posey to confound the stereotype.
Given Posey’s lack of experience, and Adames’ lack of star power for a player this high on a free agent ranking, it’s easy to view this signing as an overpay by a president of baseball ops who’s already out of his depth and doesn’t realize it. I don’t think that’s an indefensible position, and with time, it could prove to be the right read on the situation.
But I do think that view underrates two things: First, that $26 million a year isn’t what it used to be. Luis Severino just got $22.3 million a year from an A’s team that’s too poor to afford a first name. Second, consistent above-average play might not be sexy, but it’s valuable. Especially at shortstop. There’s a reason that Adames has been a must-start for a playoff team in five of his six full seasons in the majors. And those Rays and Brewers clubs had far fewer resources than these Giants.
About those Giants: They could still use a bit more star power. Between Chapman, Adames, Jung Hoo Lee, Patrick Bailey, and LaMonte Wade Jr., they’ve got good players — even very good players — across the field. But Logan Webb is the only player on the projected roster who’s a threat to win an MVP or a Cy Young. Supposedly, Posey and his crew aim to sign a top-end free agent pitcher as well. (Hey, isn’t Corbin Burnes from California?)
If so, good — they could use another big name.
Which is a pretty uncharitable thing to say about a team that just gave the biggest contract in franchise history to the no. 2 free agent on the market, I realize. But the NL West is a tough place to win right now. The Dodgers just romped to a championship and are only getting better. The Diamondbacks won the pennant in 2023, suffered a terrible glut of slumps and injuries, and improved their regular-season record by five games anyway. The Padres are, as ever, unpredictable, but they’re one of the more talented teams in any division.
The Giants could be legitimately good in 2025 and still finish fourth in the division. Writing Adames’ name into the lineup 150 games a year will go a long way toward overcoming that formidable opposition.
