Giants fans get the full Willy Adames experience with a walk-off win in home opener

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SAN FRANCISCO —  The ball found Willy Adames all game. Or, as he put it after the Giants’ wild 10-9 win over the Mariners in the home opener, “They were trying to kill me today.”

He wasn’t wrong. In a span of seven batters between the sixth and seventh innings, a trio of Mariners hitters hit a line drive 99.5 mph or harder at his backhand side, all of them deflecting off his glove for a single. Adames also made one of the finest and best-timed leaping catches from a shortstop that Oracle Park has ever seen, which isn’t a claim that can be thrown around lightly. He stole his first base as a Giant and immediately scored on a Jung Hoo Lee single in the fourth inning, and he doubled home LaMonte Wade Jr. after a two-out triple in the fifth inning.

Adames also popped out with the winning run on third and one out in the bottom of the ninth, so it wasn’t just physical harm that the Mariners were threatening him with. It was mental anguish, too. With the Giants trailing by a run with two outs in the bottom of the 11th, Adames had a chance to make the final out of the game, which would have given him two reasons to toss and turn all night.

He did not make the final out of the game.

Where there’s a Willy, there’s a way‼️ pic.twitter.com/vVZy5uIFQX

— SFGiants (@SFGiants) April 5, 2025

In his first game at Oracle Park, a sold-out crowd got the full Willy Adames experience, and then they got a little extra Willy Adames experience to take home and put in the fridge.

“I love being in the middle of everything,” he said after the game. “Even when they’re trying to kill me.”

If the story of the 2025 Giants before Friday’s home opener was clean, crisp baseball, this was the game that reminded you that style of baseball is a suggestion, not a guarantee. It was as if the team had been stuffing all of the dirty, ugly baseball into a sack this season, only to have it escape before the first pitch, while everyone was distracted by the 144th Fighter Wing’s flyover. Clean and crisp, the baseball was not.

Justin Verlander allowed seven base runners in his 2 1/3 innings, with a 13-pitch walk to Cal Raleigh hastening his exit. Out of the seven relievers the Giants used, six of them allowed at least one runner, and two allowed multiple runs. The Giants were 6-for-28 with runners in scoring position, and they left 16 runners on base, which was the most in a home game since September, 2021. What would have been the first error of the season became a single after a scoring decision, and approximately 30 seconds later, they actually made their first error of the season. About five seconds after that, there was a double steal that Patrick Bailey couldn’t get a grip on to make a throw. When the Mariners took the lead in the top of the 11th inning, they did it on a wild pitch with two outs.

Some runners weren’t advanced, and some runners weren’t brought home after they were advanced. There were strikeouts in fly ball situations, and there were fly balls in ground ball situations. When the game was paused for a replay review, Camilo Doval threw a pitch to stay loose, and it went to the backstop. Nobody was safe from the ugly baseball. Nobody.

The Giants won their fifth game in a row, by the way. They are 6-1, which is their best record to start a season since 2010. It’s the kind of record that can’t exist on clean, crisp baseball alone. An .857 winning percentage needs ugly wins to feed on, too. Those are the ones with all the calories.

There was plenty of good baseball to go around, of course. A 10-run output and a walk-off win can’t exist without the good stuff, too. Matt Chapman was on base four times and hit a long home run. After starting the season 0-for-16, LaMonte Wade Jr. had two doubles and a triple, building off his pinch-hit homer in Houston. Bailey had three hits, including a leadoff double in the ninth inning that would have been a home run in any other major league ballpark. It’s as if the 24-foot-high wall in right-center field got jealous watching Barry Bonds and Dusty Baker celebrate 25 years at Oracle Park before the game. The real main character throughout Oracle Park’s history has been Oracle Park, and don’t you forget it.

Tyler Fitzgerald scores the winning run in the eleventh inning against the Mariners. (Bob Kupbens / Imagn Images)

And while the Giants were forgoing some of that clean, crisp baseball, they still had plenty to offer. They stole four bases on Friday, giving them 10 on the season, and they haven’t been caught yet. Adames’ game-winning single in the 11th would have been a score-tying single if not for Tyler Fitzgerald stealing second in a situation where everyone in both dugouts was expecting him to steal.

“We’ve had some key (stolen bases) too,” manager Bob Melvin said after the game. “We’re not just stealing them to steal them. We’re stealing them when there are opportunities to score runs, and we had opportunities to do it. We’re not going to run into outs when (opposing pitchers) are really quick to the plate, but we feel like we have enough guys that when they anticipate and look for certain counts, breaking balls, whatever, try to get some good times. So far, so good.”

What the Giants are doing — both in terms of volume and success — is unprecedented in the San Francisco era. You have to go back to the 1960s to find a team that’s stolen as many bases this early, and you have to go back to the last season at Candlestick Park to find a team that was successful on their first 10 tries.

Praise the small ball for getting the Giants in position to walk it off. Praise the long ball for getting them to extra innings in the first place. Lasso the ugly baseball and stuff it back into the sack, but praise the clean, crisp baseball that looks even better by contrast. The Giants and Mariners traded jabs and body blows all game, and they each slipped on a half-dozen banana peels, but it ended with the second walk-off win in an Oracle Park opener in as many years.

It was a reminder that the baseball won’t always be pretty, but sometimes it’s better that way. Willy Adames almost died for this game. It’s only fitting that he was the one to send a sold-out crowd home happy.

(Top photo of Willy Adames driving in two runs for a walk-off Giants win in the 11th inning: Bob Kupbens Imagn Images)

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