Strange Willy Adames controversy emerges for SF Giants on eve of trade deadline

There isn’t a lot of hope that the SF Giants will trade any of their big contracts ahead of the trade deadline. Still, it’s notable that a weird controversy, which may ultimately be a miscommunication, about shortstop Willy Adames has emerged on the eve of the trade deadline.

On Friday night’s Apple TV broadcast of the Giants’ game against the San Diego Padres, the broadcasters were giving infield coach Ron Washington a lot of praise about the work he’s done with second baseman Luis Arraez and how he’s turned into one of the best infielders in baseball.

Yet, the broadcasters seemed to take a swipe at Adames by saying he was not as willing to work with Washington on his fielding. They said that Washington told them prior to the broadcast that it took Adames longer to commit to his daily intensive fielding drills and that manager Tony Vitello said he can see the difference in Adames’ defense after he does work with Washington. Adames has graded out as one of the worst defensive shortstops in baseball this season.

Now, it’s important to note that Adames has been dealing with a back issue for a while now and a recent San Francisco Chronicle article detailed how that has made it harder for Adames to take part in drills.

Maybe that’s what Washington meant by saying it’s taken longer for Adames to do the drills and the broadcasters misinterpreted that as meaning Adames has not been willing to put the work in or get on board with Washington’s regimen.

Willy Adames-Ron Washington controversy is on brand for 2026 SF Giants

We won’t know for sure unless Vitello, Washington, or Adames get asked about it further but the timing is significant. A cynic might assume the Giants are trying to put something bad out there about Adames ahead of the deadline but that doesn’t make much sense at all because if they’re trying to trade him would they really try to disparage him ahead of the deadline? 

This is probably just a miscommunication of some sort or maybe someone just said something and it didn’t come out as they intended. But Adames has become polarizing amongst fans this year because his bubbly personality has rubbed some the wrong way as the team has one of the worst records in MLB. Incidents like the one in Los Angeles when he forgot how many outs there were after joking around with Mookie Betts on the bases upset a lot of Giants fans.

Still, his work ethic has never come into question before so this may just be a miscommunication but when a team has a bad season every little thing can be construed negatively and turned into controversy. We’ll see how this manifests in the next few days and if it’s addressed any further but no matter what it’s been added to the pile of weird things about the 2026 Giants. 

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