CHICAGO — Power has been the name of the game for Giants shortstop Willy Adames since he debuted in MLB in 2018. And it’s a big reason he was so coveted prior to signing a seven-year, $182 million deal with San Francisco this past winter.
It’s perhaps no surprise, then, that the biggest challenge for Adames in his new home in San Francisco has been how to manage hitting at Oracle Park, which has historically suppressed power, especially for right-handed hitters. Since 2000, Oracle has seen the fewest home runs of any ballpark in Major League Baseball.
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Indeed, the Giants’ new shortstop has had a slow start to the season. That’s not unusual, as Adames is historically a slow starter, with his lowest career OPS by month coming in March/April. Entering play Wednesday, he was slashing .222/.305/.347 with six doubles, four home runs and 19 RBI. And while it took a little time, Adames hit his first two homers at Oracle Park on Sunday, something both he and the Giants had been waiting for.
Now that he’s had a little more than a month to get acclimated to his new home, the Giants’ shortstop, who spent the first seven seasons of his MLB career with Tampa Bay and Milwaukee, is adjusting to his new reality.
“It’s a little colder,” Adames said with a smile. “For me, I’m getting used to playing outside every day. You know, I’ve been indoors my whole career. So now, it’s like every day outside in a bigger park. …
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“It’s been a little harder than expected, but that’s how it is. It’ll be better in the summertime.”
Over the past seven seasons, few shortstops have hit with power to match Adames’. Only Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor (195) has hit more home runs than Adames’ 154 since the start of 2018.
And the reality is that the Giants have needed power in their lineup for quite some time, especially from the right side of the plate. Over the past two decades, San Francisco’s offense has been sorely lacking in the power department. It’s difficult to believe, but no Giant has hit 30 home runs in a season since Barry Bonds last did so back in 2004. And no Giants right-handed hitter has hit 30 home runs in a season since Jeff Kent accomplished the feat with 37 long balls in 2002.
When Adames signed with the team in December, the hope was that he could be the right-handed slugger to end the drought. But with just four home runs through the team’s first 38 games, a 30-homer season from Adames is looking like a long shot.
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“It’s tough, because it feels like you did everything great, everything perfect, and then you still have no positive results,” Adames said of hitting in San Francisco. “Sometimes, it puts a little pressure on, like, ‘Man, what do I have to do?’”
If there’s anyone who knows what it’s like to go from a hitter-friendly ballpark to cavernous Oracle Park, it’s Pat Burrell, the Giants’ hitting coach. Burrell, who hit 292 homers in his 12-year MLB career with the Phillies, Rays and Giants, played his final two seasons in San Francisco and knows firsthand the adjustments that any hitter moving to Oracle has to make.
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“Coming here, it’s a whole different ballpark,” Burrell told Yahoo Sports. “[Adames has] definitely hit quite a few balls here in San Francisco that I think probably would have been out of the ballpark in Milwaukee. But those are the adjustments you make when you change teams.
“We don’t want to come here and change who people are. That’s not what we’re here to do. But you know, in reality, it’s not a home run hitter’s ballpark. So what we’re trying to do as a team is hit more line drives. Willy has really come into his own, and I think as it warms up, temperature-wise, I really think he’ll continue to keep getting hot.”
Adames has a challenge ahead of him, and he knows it. But after learning how the ballpark plays over the past month, he has started to get a feel for his new home, with the hope that things will ultimately go his way.
The metrics back up that optimism. While his slugging percentage is just .347, Adames’ expected slugging percentage (xSLG) of .420 shows that his approach and quality of contact have been there, even if the early results haven’t followed. Also, Adames’ 88.8 mph exit velocity is almost identical to his career average, which should give him and the Giants confidence that he’s headed in the right direction. There’s reason to believe that with warmer weather will come more home runs off his bat.
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“You just gotta be comfortable and be like, ‘I did my job. I hit it hard. It just didn’t go my way,’” Adames said. “I feel like, after the first three or four weeks for me, it was like, ‘OK, forget about the results. Just continue to hit the ball hard, and they’re going to start dropping, and just maintain that confidence.’
“I’m going to keep continuing to hit the ball, and whenever they drop, they drop.”
This news was originally published on this post .
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