Willy Adames sticking up for Freddy Peralta is reminder of why SF Giants rolled the dice on him despite red flags

SF Giants shortstop Willy Adames has not exactly lived up to the seven-year, $182 million contract he signed with San Francisco. I dug into how the Giants sort of look like suckers compared to the Tampa Bay Rays and Milwaukee Brewers in relation to Adames yesterday, but it’s worth digging into a key component of why the Giants felt comfortable signing Adames to that massive deal.

According to reporter Ryan Bass who covers the Rays, the first call that Tampa Bay manager Kevin Cash received after Freddy Peralta was traded from the New York Mets to Tampa Bay at the trade deadline was from Adames himself. Cash recalled that Adames told him: “You’re getting one of the best guys in baseball.” Adames and Peralta were teammates together in Milwaukee.

That shows the kind of guy Adames is. He didn’t have to do that, yet he’s a good teammate who is obviously loyal to the guys he’s played with and it shows that he is willing to go out of his way to support the people he’s become close with in baseball.

It’s important to remember that after the Giants signed him to that big contract, there was talk about how Adames was a good player but there was also a lot of chatter about the kind of teammate he was. 

President of baseball operations Buster Posey, who had just been hired a few months prior, said of Adames at his introductory press conference after the signing: “I’ve said it over and over again, we have all just heard about the person, and the kind of person this is. I think Craig Counsell [Adames’ manager in Milwaukee] said he’s a unique connector of people and that really struck me. I think to win championships you have to have personalities like Willy that they’re able to identify with everyone in the clubhouse.”

Giants may have been thinking more about personality than value with Willy Adames

It really seems like the Giants were betting on Adames the person more than Adames the player. They knew that he was a career .248/.322/.444 hitter and was coming off a rough defensive season when he inked that deal so the red flags were there. They knew even if he was a guy who could hit 30 homers in a season, the last few years of his contract would probably be rough. The rationale seemed to be that he’d be decent enough in his first few seasons and was a likable enough personality that he’d be a recognizable face who fans could latch onto and get behind.

That sort of proved to be true in the first half of 2025. Adames was dreadful both offensively and defensively but he played pretty much every single game and was relentlessly positive, not letting his poor play impact his teammates. It was much easier to accept his struggles when the team was winning and to his credit he turned things around in the second half, but his struggles couldn’t be swept under the rug in 2026 with the team having an awful season.

Adames is obviously a fun, bubbly personality but his postgame Powerade baths and his chumminess with opponents doesn’t quite hit the same when the team is well under .500 and he’s declining both on offense and defense.

He’s a likable dude and the fact that he goes out of his way to do things like tell Cash about the kind of guy Peralta is really speaks highly of him and he deserves credit for that, but the Giants didn’t give him all that money just to be a good guy. They need him to get back to being a productive ballplayer in 2027 otherwise that contract is going to look even worse. 

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