SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – On Thursday night they were friends enjoying a night out in downtown Phoenix. The Brewers’ Freddy Peralta and the Giants’ Willy Adames and Logan Webb attended the Suns game with former All-Star outfielder Carlos Gomez, and it was there that Peralta learned that he would get the matchup he wanted in his Cactus League debut the following day.
Adames, the glue guy in Milwaukee’s clubhouse for the past four seasons, now the Giants’ starting shortstop after inking a franchise record-setting contract, would be in the lineup for Friday’s Brewers-Giants game at Scottsdale Stadium.
Peralta won the only at-bat between the two friends, firing a pair of fastballs to Adames and inducing a flyout on the second. But the Giants made it a three-run inning on Matt Chapman’s two-run home run and Wilmer Flores’ solo shot on the very next pitch. Everybody came away with something to feel good about in the Giants' 9-2 win.
“It was a little weird,” Peralta said. “I told him before the game, ‘You look good in orange.’”
Peralta and Adames shared a pregame hug in the outfield. It was the first of several pleasantries between Adames and the team that loved him from the moment he arrived in a May 2021 trade with the Rays, helping to save a sagging Brewers season and propelling them to the first of three National League Central titles in four years.
Now he’s a Giant, but the friendships last. Before stepping into the batter’s box against Peralta, Adames pointed to the Brewers’ dugout while he took the field in the top of the first inning, and he jogged over to hug Milwaukee third-base coach Jason Lane before taking his place at shortstop.
It’s not every day you see that kind of friendly fraternizing, even at a Spring Training game.
“It’s a little different,” Peralta said. “But, you know, we’re different.”
Said Adames: “I couldn’t concentrate. I was just laughing in the box.”
It wasn’t the first time they faced off, but it had been a while. Adames recalled hitting against Peralta when they were young ballplayers in the Dominican Republic, Adames from the mountain town of Jánico and Peralta from the agricultural town of Moca, an hour’s drive to the east. The towns were baseball rivals, and at Christmastime they would meet on the field.
Now they are rivals again. The Giants, with a new president of baseball operations in franchise legend Buster Posey, and a new GM in Zack Minasian, targeted Adames as the perfect choice for their first, big move. Minasian spent 14 years in Milwaukee’s front office before moving to the Giants in 2019, and was keenly aware of the impact Adames had there.
It took barely any time at all for that instinct to be proven right. After his introductory press conference in San Francisco and a visit to the team’s facility in Scottsdale, Adames traveled to the team’s complex in the Dominican Republic to attend international signing day. No one asked him to do it, Minasian said. Adames simply did it on his own.
“We’ve played seven Spring Training games, and you can already feel it with his teammates, how well he mixes in,” Minasian said. “Who he is – that’s who we want to be as an organization.”
Adames said he’s felt the love from new teammates like Chapman and Webb, who joined Posey in recruiting Adames to San Francisco. At the same time, leaving the Brewers has been an adjustment. He had dinner earlier this week with Peralta and Brewers catcher William Contreras, and regularly texts with Brewers manager Pat Murphy, coach Nestor Corredor and others. Adames was close with Brewers legendary radio broadcaster Bob Uecker, and his eyes filled with tears on Friday while talking about Uecker’s passing last month.
“Everybody there [in Milwaukee] treated me like I was home,” Adames said. “It’s hard to leave a place like that. I’m always going to have love for them. At the end of the day, it comes to business.”
The Brewers will replace Adames at shortstop with either second-year infielder Joey Ortiz, who manned third base for Milwaukee last season, or third-year Brice Turang, who not only won the NL Gold Glove Award at second base, but also the Platinum Glove Award as the NL’s top overall defender.
Replacing Adames off the field will be a different matter. Murphy, who specializes in matters of human chemistry, knows it’s not as easy as asking any of those players to fill the void. He often likens building a team to making soup, saying Friday morning that if you take out the tomatoes, you can’t compensate by adding more salt. If Peralta is the salt in this analogy, Murphy explained, he’s already enough.
“Freddy, just keep doing what you’re doing. You’re wonderful,” Murphy said. “This new group of 26 and all the other people who come in, they all have to create their own recipe that tastes good.”
It sounds simple, but it’s not.
“I don’t know if we’re going to be able to replace that, but that’s him,” Peralta said. “That’s his personality. I’m happy for him. He’s probably going to bring that to [the Giants] now. We just have to find a way forward to keep the great relationships that we’ve had for years here in the clubhouse, the culture that we’ve been growing here.
“I think that, so far, we’ve been doing a good job with all the players that have been in the clubhouse in Spring Training. We have to make everyone feel like a family.”
They had some fun with Friday’s matchup, starting with some friendly trash talk at the Suns gams.
“A little bit, just kind of saying what they were going to throw at each other,” Webb said. “Freddy got the best of him. I’m sure he’ll let him know.”