With today’s 0-for-4, Willy Adames is now 2-for-his-last-25, with a triple and a trio of RBI. His .629 OPS for the season is among the bottom 30 for MLB regulars and the worst showing on the San Francisco Giants. It’s not what Buster Posey had in mind when he signed the shortstop to a franchise-record contract, but after a rough April — and despite this recent 2-for-25 — he has fallen back into the hitter he has been throughout his career.
Now, how can I say that given his terrible results? Statcast, baby. Those are the under the hood numbers that can either bring fans solace… or anguish. With Adames, it ought to be a solace, even if a .629 OPS from a pricey player suggests anything but. Before I throw some charts at you, I’ll point out that before the 2-for-25, he was 16-for-58 in May (64 PA) with a triple slash of .276/.344/.517 (.861 OPS). That put him in a group of Ketel Marte, Cody Bellinger, Matt Chapman, and Kyle Tucker — all players you might’ve expected him to keep pace with throughout the season.
But Willy Adames’s career hasn’t been defined by consistency. It’s been defined by booms and busts. His rolling statistics look like an in-progress seismograph detecting a massive earthquake. In 2022, his first full season with the Brewers, he hit 31 home runs for the first time in his career. His rolling wOBA looked like this:
Now, the rolling stats for every baseball player looks a little bit like this. Here’s Buster Posey’s rolling wOBA from 2021 (.304/.390/.499):
Here’s Matt Chapman’s from last season (.247/.328/.463):
So, the back and forth — especially in 10 PA stretches — is just how a typical season looks, and we understand that intuitively. About five times a year, hitters are going to hit rock bottom. Some players we define as “streaky,” when the truth is that all players are that way to varying degrees. Willy Adames in particular, though, varies those degrees.
Willy Adames being a streaky, power-hitting shortstop with a solid glove is perhaps the definition of his game, and from a hitting perspective, slashing in parallel with Matt Chapman might be his ceiling (emphasis on the hitting — he’s not an elite defender like Chapman). Adames’s career line of .246/.320/.438 should be seen as his annual ceiling, and when you factor in above average defense (more on that in a bit) we get the marquee player the Giants signed. Believe it or not, he looks like he’s back on track to being that player. Here’s a look at his rolling wOBA in 10 plate appearance increments:
His season line will always be weighed down by those first dreadful 29 games (129 PA): .202/.279/.263 but — and this is one of the most important buts you’ll read this season! — since then, he has gotten over that “new team” hump and reverted to the Willy Adames who was signed. As you can see, his floor has risen since around the 130 plate appearance mark, and if it’s not clear to see, here’s a graph that zooms out and really shows the change:
It’s around the 129 PA mark that he turned his season around, Statcast-wise. It’s not quite the May 1st line of demarcation I drew earlier; it’s the two-game series in San Diego at the end of April. I think we can all agree that 2 games in the small sample size of 31 games can be a meaningful pivot point for a player — especially one as accomplished as Adames. Since then and coming into today’s win over the Nationals, his line has been .235/.323/.471 over 96 PA. That’s pretty close to that career triple slash ceiling I mentioned.
The other things Statcast looks at and features on the player profile pages (xwOBA, xBA, average exit velocity, etc.) — aren’t great for Adames right now, but his ceiling, as demonstrated by his career, isn’t out of reach. This is how it looks right now:
xwOBA and average exit velocity will be mitigated some by lower chase rates and strikeout rates over time. He has had a lot of blue on his ledger throughout his career, though. Here’s a poorly created animated gif of his Statcast profiles since 2018:
He hasn’t looked good because throughout his career he has not looked good at times. You can ignore the graphs if you want to, but hopefully you’re watching the quality of his at bats. They’ve definitely improved a lot since that rough first month.
The most concerning quality right now is that defense, which has been on everybody’s radar since the start of the month. Maria Guardado, Giants beat writer for MLB.com, wrote about his struggles a little over three weeks ago:
After committing a pair of defensive miscues in the Giants’ 9-2 loss to the Cubs in Monday night’s series opener at Wrigley Field, Adames entered Tuesday with seven errors over his first 36 games at shortstop, which is tied with D-backs third baseman Eugenio Suárez, White Sox second baseman Lenyn Sosa and Reds shortstop Elly De La Cruz for the most in the Majors this season.
He offered this in his own defense:
“Sometimes it just happens,” Adames said. “You get into bad habits and stuff. You just get unlucky sometimes. I feel like for me and Chappy, it hasn’t been the best. We’ll be good. We’re going to be alright. We’re just going to continue to work.”
He’s committed just one error since — a throwing error in the top of the 6th when the Giants were already trailing the Royals 8-2 — so I’m compelled to believe that he is turning things around on defense. At the same time, his ceiling might not be the +10 or +16 Outs Above Average guy from 2022 and 2023. Last year, his defense dropped to just +1 Outs Above Average and FanGraphs valued his defense at +6.0 Defensive Runs Above Average — so, an above average defender, but only by a little, and factoring in where he’s at in the aging curve (he’ll turn 30 on September 2nd), perhaps a sign that he’s already in the process of a steady defensive decline.
Last season, Jack Stern over at Brewers Fanatic wrote a nice piece analyzing Adames’s decline. It’s a comprehensive view by a fandom that had plenty of familiarity with the player. Stern’s conclusion?
“One of the biggest reasons for the downturn may be that Adames is approaching ground balls in a way that looks less fundamentally sound than in years past.”
The video offered showed a player who looked more discombobulated than you’d like to see from a guy setting himself up to land a nine-figure deal in the offseason. Adames might want to consider more yoga or flexibility training to stay nimble in the field at a tough defensive position, but in terms of his value to the Giants this season, I think we’re seeing both the bat and the glove round into form.
