Willy and a Week to Remember

Dec 14, 2024 | Latest Post, Out of Left Field

photo credit: Willy Adames IG (@willy2802)

by DrLefty

Last week I published an OOLF previewing the Winter Meetings, and just a few hours later, news broke that the Giants had reached agreement with top free agent shortstop Willy Adames, a signing made official on Tuesday and celebrated, as Greek Giant covered, on Thursday at Oracle Park. In a moment of rich irony, it was Jon Heyman who was first with the news.

 

If the rest of you are like me, remembering the infamous “Arson Judge to Giants” tweet two years ago, you quickly looked for confirmation from another source who wasn’t Heyman, but happily, it turned out to be true this time–Willy Adames is indeed now a Giant. Then, remembering the other expensive shortstop the Giants almost signed two years ago, you didn’t exhale until you heard he’d passed his physical.

 

There’s not much that hasn’t already been said about the Adames signing, but as Matt Chapman put it, Buster Posey “gets an A+” for his first signing as President of Baseball Operations.

 

We’ll return to the “just getting started” part of the quote, but let’s talk about some of the other news of the week. As I mentioned in my last column, the Winter Meetings in 2023 were incredibly dull, but this week was wild. Not only were there several enormous free agent signings, but there also were several major trades.

Top free agent deals this week: Juan Soto, Mets, 15 years (!!!), $765 mil (!!!); Max Fried, Yankees, 8 years, $218 mil (!!!); Willy Adames, Giants, 7 years, $182 mil. All three of these were record-setting in their own way: Soto because it’s the largest contract in professional sports history (!!!), Fried because it’s the largest contract ever given to a left-handed pitcher, and Adames because it’s the largest contract ever signed by a San Francisco Giant. (Notice I said “signed.”)

Top trades this week: Kyle Tucker from the Astros to the Cubs; Garrett Crochet from the White Sox to the Red Sox; Devin Williams from the Brewers to the Yankees. I get the latter two deals. I’m a little confused by the Cubs trading for Tucker when they already had a surplus of outfielders and were reportedly looking to trade Cody Bellinger and/or Seiya Suzuki. I understand that Tucker is a rising superstar, but he’ll be a free agent in a year. In that sense, it’s similar to the Yankees sending a haul to the Padres this time last year for Soto. And it sort of worked out for the Yankees, who did ride a great year from Soto and another MVP season from Aaron Judge all the way to playing in the World Series. Are the Cubs one Kyle Tucker away from a World Series appearance? Seems doubtful from here, especially with two free-spending powerhouses in the National League. I guess we’ll see how that goes for them. Another implication of the Tucker trade is that now the Cubs really, really, really want to trade Bellinger.

Things have been moving so fast this week that I keep checking Twitter even as I’m writing this to make sure I don’t miss anything!

 

So Is Buster “Just Getting Started”?

The news about Adames seemed to stun everyone, including beat writers who’d been telling us that (a) the shortstop addition was sure to be Ha-Seong Kim and (b) the Giants were planning to take a step back and cut payroll. Apparently the “step back” rumor was not unfounded, but things seem different now. From Alex Pavlovic:

…this is where the change in leadership might have the biggest impact on the 2025 season. According to sources familiar with the initial planning for 2025, the Giants were talking of taking a step back and focusing on developing young players. They had gone into the luxury tax in 2024 after signing Chapman, Blake Snell and others, and the thinking was that payroll could drop significantly after being up over $200 million last year. But that appears to have changed.

To be clear, that the Giants would want Adames is not the stunner. They needed a shortstop and he was the best one available. The surprising part is first, that Adames chose the Giants when reportedly other big fish like the Yankees and the Dodgers were also interested in him, and second, that he agreed to terms before Soto did. Adames, who has always idolized Derek Jeter and will wear his number 2 as a Giant, admitted that the possibility of playing where Jeter had played was tantalizing. Yet he still chose the Giants. Why? Two words: Buster Posey. As Adames put it in an interview on Giants Talk,

“[Posey] said he’s not stopping here. He said he’s going to try to do more moves,” Adames told NBC Sports Bay Area. “When you have a guy like that recruiting, who doesn’t want to come here? Obviously we have a lot of talent and a lot of young (players) that are going to be amazing baseball players, and that’s one of the main reasons that I wanted to come here, just to try to build that with them. Hopefully we can build that winning culture and maybe win a few championships.”

So now we see what’s next. All week the rumors have been hot and heavy that the Giants are one of the frontrunners to sign ace right-hander Corbin Burnes. The rumors got stronger after some of their main competition, the Yankees and Red Sox, obtained Fried and Crochet, respectively. Supposedly the Giants’ main competition for Burnes is Toronto, and rumors also indicate that Burnes, a California native who played college ball in the Bay Area and has his offseason home in Scottsdale, would rather be a Giant. But we’ve been hearing that for days, and so far, no deal. The Giants were also reportedly in on trying to trade for Tucker, but they couldn’t compete with the Cubs’ package. Andrew Baggarly wrote an article several days ago speculating that the Giants might turn to the Brian Sabean playbook and sign a big-name veteran like Paul Goldschmidt, Max Scherzer, or Justin Verlander, hoping not only to get one last great season out of them but also to have them mentor young players (e.g., Goldschmidt with first baseman of the future Bryce Eldridge or Scherzer/Verlander with the Giants’ crop of young pitchers). Pavlovic has also mentioned Goldschmidt, who “has a lot of fans in the organization.”

‘Tis the season for shopping, but the Giants’ list hasn’t really changed. They’ve crossed “shortstop” off the list, and the other two big items are “another bat” (Pavlovic described them as “one bat short,” which sounds about right) and a veteran starting pitcher who could be at or near the top of the rotation. There are various ways they could get there, including trades. If the shopping list hasn’t changed, has the budget? We shall see.

 

An Early Merry Christmas to Some Young Giants

In the collective bargaining agreement signed in 2022, one new item was a pool of money ($50 mil) for salary bonuses for players in their pre-arbitration years. There are specific amounts allocated for top finishes in MVP, Cy Young, Rookie of the Year, and all-MLB teams, and beyond that, the pool is divided by a formula based on WAR. In the first year (2023), two young Giants, Patrick Bailey and Camilo Doval, got bonuses. This year it was four.

 

The major league minimum salary for 2024 was $740,000, and it will rise to $760K in 2025. Ramos and Fitzgerald spent part of the year in AAA, so their salaries were less than that amount. For all of them, that’s a pretty sweet enhancement to their base salary, like “down payment for a house” money (unless they want to buy something in the Bay Area, of course). Congratulations to Patrick, Fitz, Ryan, and Heliot–you were good boys this year and Santa came early!

So that’s the news up to this minute. We’ll all keep refreshing Twitter/Bluesky/Threads/TWG to see what happens next. I’m grateful to the Giants for providing some happy distraction from the 49ers. Have a good weekend and stay safe out there with this nasty weather. Lefty out.