San Francisco Giants Top Free-Agent Signing Has Been a Bust So Far This Season

The top signing for the San Francisco Giants has been a bust early on this season.

Apr 27, 2025; San Francisco, California, USA; San Francisco Giants shortstop Willy Adames (2) takes a lead from third base against the Texas Rangers during the first inning at Oracle Park. | Robert Edwards-Imagn Images

The San Francisco Giants are off to an excellent start to the campaign, with new leadership seemingly changing the culture overnight.

Despite not making a ton of upgrades this winter, the Giants have been one of the best teams in baseball to begin the season.

Even though the National League is extremely tough, San Francisco is keeping pace with the top teams in their division.

Coming into the year, the Giants were predicted to be a team that was going to rely on strong pitching and their defense. While the bullpen has been very good, the starting rotation has been a little hit or miss.

What has been the real surprise and the main reason why they are performing so well is the offense. For many campaigns, the Giants would struggle to generate runs on a consistent basis. However, that has all changed to begin the season.

Furthermore, what might be the most impressive is that they are doing so with a key member struggling.

Kerry Miller of Bleacher Report recently wrote about some of the biggest busts to begin the season. For the Giants, it has unfortunately been their star free-agent signing this past winter.

“He is whiffing at non-fastballs at an alarming rate, while his barrel percentage on batted balls is barely even half of what it had been with the Brewers. Add to that his woeful defensive metrics, and let's just say this isn't the start San Francisco had in mind..”

The signing of Willy Adames was easily the top move made by San Francisco this winter, with the slugger signing a lucrative long-term deal.

Prior to Buster Posey taking over as president of baseball operations, the team had some trouble luring in top free agents. However, Adames was a great signing on paper, filling a positional need and giving them a middle of the order hitter that was also needed.

However, the slugger is no stranger to slow starts, and he is off to one in 2025. So far, he has slashed .202/.279/.263 with just one home run and 14 RBI. While it hasn’t been a good beginning to the campaign, it’s been impressive that the Giants have been able to perform as well as they have offensively.

Fortunately, even with Adames struggling, the team has received some great production from Jung Hoo Lee and Wilmer Flores, who both missed time with injuries last season.

Now, the hope has to be that, as the calendar flips to May soon, that the talented shortstop will get going.

If Adames ends up the campaign with 25 home runs and plays up to his capabilities, the offense of San Francisco might be able to sustain being one of the top in the league.