What To Do with Willy Adames?

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Photo via Willy Adames - Instagram

Willy Adames

Willy Adames

The Brewers have a few weeks left to develop an offseason plan before the end of the World Series, and some of the most interesting decisions they’ll have to make involve players coming up on the end of team control.

When players come up to the major leagues for the first time their original team holds their exclusive rights for six full seasons, which typically comprise three years where the team sets the player’s salary followed by three where the player’s salary is determined through the arbitration process. This winter the Brewers have three high profile players coming into the final season of that window: Pitchers Corbin Burnes and Brandon Woodruff and shortstop Willy Adames. 

In recent years the Brewers have often traded players in this situation for players who are earlier in the process instead of risking losing those players in their eventual free agency. The decisions they make regarding these players this winter will go a long way in determining whether 2024 is a “go for it” year or a potential step back.

MLB Trade Rum  attempts to project players’ arbitration salaries around this time each year, and this season the least expensive of those three stars is also the least likely to move: Brandon Woodruff is predicted to receive $11.6 million in 2024. The conversation around him this winter likely changed significantly in the season’s final week, as he may have been a trade candidate before a shoulder injury knocked him off the Wild Card Series roster and effectively ended his season. It’s unlikely anyone will trade significant value for one season of Woodruff without a clear indication that he’s healthy, and shoulder injuries are notoriously difficult to monitor or treat.

On the other end of the spectrum, Corbin Burnes projects to be the arbitration season’s most expensive Brewer at $15.1 million. Burnes has already been through the arbitration process once and came away with a negative experience from it, as he and the Brewers went to a hearing over a difference of just $650,000 in requested salary in 2023. In a year where the free agent market is relatively light on potential impact pitchers, Burnes might be an extremely attractive target for a team that’s looking to win next year. Dealing the former Cy Young Award winner, however, would be a massive blow to the Brewers’ rotation upside as well.

In the middle is perhaps the most polarizing and interesting case: Willy Adames is projected to make $12.4 million in his final season before free agency, a number that will certainly cause some fans to bristle a bit. After a red-hot partial season in Milwaukee in 2021 and a second year in 2022 where the local writers selected him as the Brewers’ MVP, Adames’ numbers took a bit of a downturn in 2023. He started slowly and was one of the faces of a Brewer offense that struggled mightily in May and June, batting just .199 with a .289 on-base and .368 slugging through his first 72 games.

Adames’ offensive numbers went up in each of the regular season’s last three months and improved significantly after the Brewers moved him down in the order following the trade deadline. From July 29 (his first of 39 consecutive games batting fourth or lower) through the end of the season Adames’ numbers looked much more like his career averages, as he batted .241 with a .348 on-base and .432 slugging in 55 games. He walked over 13% of the time during that stretch, a significant improvement over his career rate. 

Evaluating Adames by his offense alone, however, leaves out a big portion of his value. Adames is a significantly above average defender at shortstop, maybe more so in 2023 than any other season. FanGraphs estimates Adames’ performance in the field was worth 17.7 runs this year, which would be a new career best. Using MLB’s Statcast data, Baseball Savant rates Adames in the 99th percentile among MLB players in range and in the 73th percentile in arm strength. Those factors combine to tie Adames for the 11th best Fielding Run Value in all of baseball, regardless of position. 

Across the sport it’s relatively rare for a player to produce that kind of defensive value and also be above average on offense.  Furthermore, Adames will still only be 28 years old for most of the 2024 season, as his birthday is in September. There has been some sentiment among Brewers fans that the club “dodged a bullet” by not signing Adames to a long term extension before the 2023 season, but if the Brewers trade him this winter or let him leave as a free agent a year from now they’re unlikely to find an alternative to match his production. The list of primary shortstops who outperformed Adames in FanGraphs WAR (Wins Above Replacement) this season includes Corey Seager, Francisco Lindor, Dansby Swanson, Xander Bogaerts and Trea Turner, and in the last two years those five have all signed new long term contracts with an average value of ten years and $285 million.

If the Brewers hold onto the trio of Woodruff, Burnes and Adames this winter then they’ll likely spend about $40 million, a large portion of their projected payroll. The decisions they make on these players, however, will be a key determining factor in whether their brightest days may be in the short term future or further down the road.