Willy Adames is proof Giants are playing checkers while Rays, Brewers are playing chess

The World Series begins tonight as the Milwaukee Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays will square off. In some ways this is the Willy Adames series since he played for both the Rays and Brewers earlier in his career. The fact that he’s now with the San Francisco Giants, who are coming off one of the worst seasons in franchise history, just shows that organizations like the Rays and Brewers are operating on a different level than San Francisco.

Adames has had a bit of a winding career so far. A recent article in The Athletic by Tyler Kepner does a good job breaking down the different trades he’s been involved in, but for a brief summary he signed as an international free agent with the Detroit Tigers and then went to the Tampa Bay Rays in the trade that sent David Price to Detroit.

He made his big league debut with Tampa Bay and established himself as a solid young player. Then Tampa decided to trade him to the Milwaukee Brewers in 2021 in exchange for a few pitchers. One of those pitchers was Drew Rasmussen who is going to be Tampa Bay’s Game 2 starter.

Adames continued to be a solid, productive player in Milwaukee and turned into a fan-favorite thanks to his bubbly personality. After the 2024 season he hit free agency and the Brewers, who, like the Rays, rarely ever dish out big contracts, decided to let him walk in free agency. They extended him a qualifying offer they knew he’d reject so they at least got some draft compensation and he ended up signing a seven-year, $182 million contract with San Francisco.

Even though the Brewers let one of their better players sign with another team, they’ve been just fine. They made it to the NLCS in 2025 and are now in the World Series in 2026. Since the Rays traded Adames in 2021 they have made the playoffs in four of those six seasons.

Meanwhile, the Giants haven’t made the playoffs since 2021 and now they are saddled with a bad contract to a shortstop who is in decline both offensively and defensively. He has a no-trade clause and even if he didn’t there probably aren’t any teams who would want to take on that deal.

Giants are light years behind both the Rays and the Brewers

The Giants look like fools compared to the Rays and Brewers. Both of those teams got what they could out of him and either got solid players or draft compensation in exchange for him and then didn’t make the mistake of overpaying him in free agency. 

San Francisco had gone so long without landing a big fish in free agency that the Adames signing got some fans excited even if it was pretty obvious that a contract that big to a guy who had never made an All-Star Game and had a career slash line of .248/.322/.444 through the 2024 season wouldn’t age all that well.

It’s just a reminder that the Giants are behind a lot of teams right now. Whether it’s because they aren’t emphasizing analytics enough or if it’s just because Buster Posey is an inexperienced president of baseball operations, they need to learn from the Brewers and Rays going forward. 

Add us as a preferred source on Google

Follow