The concept of a team captain isn’t all that important and fans will typically project their favorite player as the face of the franchise, but with Brandon Belt Celebration Day just 12 days out, it got me thinking, “Who is the captain of the Giants?“ Like, if we had to pick and Tony Vitello wasn’t an option (sorry, Tony!), who would it be?
When Netflix and Major League Baseball promoted Opening Night, it was Aaron Judge and the Yankees take on Rafael Devers and the San Francisco Giants. Frequently,
national broadcasts will default to Matt Chapman as the team’s leader when discussing the state of the organization. But neither of those players performs or carries themselves in such a way that you would automatically think, “He’s the face of the team.” That distinction goes to Willy Adames.
Maybe all of this goes without saying as he’s the recipient of the richest contract offered in team history, but other factors make a compelling and straight forward case for the Giants’ shortstop.
The camera loves him
We’ll start with superficial because this is a good factor. He’s smiling at least half the time the camera catches him and his face always lights up when he does, which means he’s an electric screen presence. Not only someone you want to watch, but someone you seek out. That’s a great quality in a marquee player and a leader.
Should this discussion even matter when the team is trying to claw back to relevancy? Sure, why not? It’s early enough in the season to still make predictions and over the summer the team will need leadership to get through the rough patches. Cutting to Adames smiling as the team runs off the field during a half inning is a simple pleasure we don’t have to overthink and needn’t overlook.
His teammates love him
When the Giants signed him, Susan Slusser gathered quotes from former coaches and teammates as well as Matt Chapman’s intel gathering about him and the consensus is that he makes everyone around him better when he’s not being a model player himself.
“I couldn’t be more excited,” [Chapman] said. “No one has a bad word to say about him, and I love the way he goes about his business. He plays the right way, he plays for the team — he has a lot of the qualities I’d like to think I have. He wants to set the tone every day, too.”
They selected him to be the 2025 Willie Mac Award recipient. In the offseason, he traveled with Tony Vitello — who he nicknamed Rookie — to South Korea to partner up with Jung Hoo Lee for some cultural immersion and Giants propaganda.
The trip was also a pretty big signal that the team loves him, too. He’s a great Giants ambassador.
He broke the 30 home run season drought
Adames has been as much of a help to his teammates by simply being a positive guy as he has a leader by example. The Giants hadn’t had a 30 home run hitter since 2004. He did it by playing in 160 games and overcoming a horrendous start to the season (.680 OPS in the 1st half, .828 OPS in the 2nd half).
He’s going to be here through 2031
Longevity is a factor in this, I think, and even though Rafael Devers is signed through 2033, we have to take the work already done to this point. Matt Chapman has been the quiet performer. Devers is the aloof talent guy. Adames is a merging of the two personalities.
After slaying the 30 home run drought monster, he’s still got some things left to do in his career. Despite receiving MVP votes in 2021 and 2024, he has never been named to an All-Star team. As Steven Kennedy noted in his player review, “Disappointing might be an apt way to ultimately describe Adames’s first year as a Giant, but it wasn’t a disappointment.“ He’s already off to a great start in year two, playing in all 16 games and hitting a league-leading 9 doubles to go with a pair of homers. A triple slash of .258/.313/.500 — fantastic if he can sustain it over a full season (he probably won’t as he’s never slugged .500 in a full season), but mainly, it’s heartening to see after a career where he’s been notorious for slow starts.
He’s been a fantastic addition to the Giants roster as well as its culture. The exact shot in the arm the team has been looking for in its post-championship wandering through a desert of mediocrity. Willy Adames might just lead them back to the land of success.
But if Buster Posey cornered you in an elevator at Oracle Park or if a beat writer solicited your feedback for a piece they were working on and demanded you name the team’s captain, who would you select?
