There’s been a Will before, and also a Wilmer — but never in the awards’ 45 year history has there ever been a Willie Mac Award Winner named Willie…until Willy Adames in 2025.
Fudge the spelling a bit, and call it destiny. Adames’s name was etched on the plaque honoring the season’s clubhouse cornerstone from the very beginning. From that first time he catapulted himself over the dugout railing in front of the home crowd, or ran the final stretch with the winning run as he sprinted towards home, he was a shoo-in, a no-doubter.
He celebrated with a no-doubter in his first at-bat of the night.
The 2-run shot put the Giants up for good Friday night. Now with 29 taters to his name, Adames is on the brink of ending the infamous 30 HR season drought that has dragged on since 2004. 571 Major League Baseball players have hit 30 or more home runs in the twenty years since Bonds hit 45 — and none of those players did it wearing a Giants uniform. The only other Giant in that stretch to get to 29 is Brandon Belt in 2021, who needed just 97 games and 325 ABs to do it. He would’ve accomplished the feat easily if not for an absolute bummer of a bunt attempt that four years on, I obviously don’t think about at all.
If you need incentive to watch these final two games against the Rockies — and the pursuit of mediocrity that is trying to deadlift the overall season record to 81-81 just isn’t hyping you up — Adames’s pursuit of 30 might get you jazzed. His at-bats after the 1st inning pulled fans to their seats. Oracle simmered, ready to burst into a boil on every elevated ball in play. In the 2nd inning, Adames lifted a routine flyball to left, and the place nearly exploded.
It’s funny to think about how the park where Bonds launched 71 and 715 and 756 has become so homer-starved that a relatively mediocre single-season feat has the whole place on edge. While Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani are routinely chasing 50 and 60, while Cal Raleigh is breaking records in Seattle, San Francisco fans, spoiled after all those years, have been reduced to scraps and crumbs. In the grand scheme of things, its perhaps disheartening, a little embarrassing, slightly pathetic. But this “race for 30” is a perfect example of baseball’s ability to conjure meaning. Out of nowhere and for no good reason, like a match lit in a dark room, Adames has our attention. No one else’s. There will be no ESPN broadcast-interruptions when Adames is at the plate like they did with Judge a couple years ago. No one across the national game is thinking or caring about 29 becoming 30, and if they are, it’s probably with a pleasurable-grin, a smug, punchable, and somewhat valid expression that reads Serves you right. Bonds took us to the peak of power and then cast us off from that height. We were thrown from Mt. Whitney to wander the immediate desert lows of Death Valley. After such a long period of time even reaching sea-level is cause for celebration.
Tune-in though — because he ain’t there yet. Adames got the Giants started against Germán Márquez, and he had a couple more opportunities to blow the game wide open, but it was Heliot Ramos who delivered a 2-out, 3-run monster shot in the 2nd.
The early 5-spot thanks to a duo of crooked number homers appeared to be plenty with Trevor McDonald on the mound.
Making just his second start of his career, McDonald followed up his impressive performance against LA by cruising through 7 innings on just 89 pitches while striking out 10 — and needing just two pitches to do it.
The right-hander threw his curveball 62% of the time, his sinker 34% to author his first MLB win. The breaking ball generated a 41% whiff rate mostly by generating a 70% chase rate from Rockies hitters. No they aren’t the most disciplined bunch, but some of their offerings were shocking. Jordan Beck got his 4-K night started by chasing a McDonald curve that dissected the opposite batter’s box.
An egregious example that highlights how difficult the curve can be on the opposing hitter.
Compared to others around the league, the pitch is a little bit funky. Based on its movement, Mike Krukow referred to it as a slider from the booth. Baseball Savant seemed convinced too that some of McDonald’s offerings had to have been sliders. The pitch is flatter in terms of vertical drop then your typical loopy curve with more speed. It topped out at 87.5 MPH last night and averaged 85.9 MPH which would be the fastest average curveball velocity in the league (a hair zippier than Márquez’s).
There was some speculation by Giants Prospect Tracker, who has been singing McDonald’s praises for awhile now, that the pitch’s effectiveness came from the arm slot. His particular release point helps maintain the curves harder pace, while allowing him to tunnel it more effectively off the sinker. The other curve-happy Giant, Landen Roupp’s arm angle is ten-degrees lower than McDonald’s and nearly ten beats slower on average. Márquez’s typical slot, whose curve is of a similar tempo to McDonald’s, is much more over-the-shoulder.
The combination of all these elements made the breaking ball an all-in-one pitch. It could steal a strike early in the count, draw an off-balanced swing, or finish off an at-bat. No matter how many times McDonald showed the pitch to them, Colorado hitters always seemed surprised by it, whether it was the speed, the shape, the location, or the fact that it wasn’t his fastball. The first 9 strikeouts of the night were all swing-and-miss strike-threes delivered by the curve.
His tenth, to finish off the 7th: a cheeky sinker that clipped the outside corner.
Despite the aforementioned dominance, the curve did not have a perfect night.
One pitch, one errant curve that hung at the top of the zone to Ezequiel Tovar, brought McDonald plummeting back to earth. A pitch, no matter how dominant, is only as good as its location. With two outs and two on in the 5th — the first (and only) time the Rockies had as many baserunners on in the game — Tovar, always aggressive on the first pitch, got the breaking ball he was looking for exactly where he wanted it.
The three-run shot ruined a perfectly nice pitching line and comfortable 5-run lead, but it didn’t cause any further problems. San Francisco got a run back the next frame after Matt Chapman’s 1,000th career hit set up a Bryce Eldridge sacrifice fly. McDonald retook the mound and needed just 15 pitches to retire the final six batters he faced before Joel Peguero and Ryan Walker handled the 8th and 9th innings with little fuss.
Two more games to go.
