I knew Christian Yelich before he came to the Brewers — really took a liking to him when he played for the Marlins. So it was great news when the Brewers acquired him a few years back.
Willy Adames, not so much. I’d only heard his name a few times, and never really saw him play (although he played in the World Series last year). And when I heard the Brewers traded away two of their strong bullpen players for him (J.P. Feyereisen and Drew Rasmussen), I had to wonder. But then I saw him play. I saw the fire he brought to the game. And I saw the absolute laser-accurate rifle he had for an arm, which was encouraging in itself, considering the Brewers had traded away Orlando Arcia (another of my favorites) and his replacement at Shortstop, Luis Urias, was throwing balls all over the place (he made three errors in one game earlier this year).
The thing is, Adames has made everyone better. He’s hitting. He’s encouraging. He’s raising everyone’s game — especially Urias’s, who is doing much better both in the field and in the batter’s box. The Brewers are an incredible 33-15 since the Adames trade, and lead the NL Central by 5 games after wallowing around below .500 before picking him up.
So Adames has done it for me. He’s made baseball exciting again. I actually look forward to the games, just like I did when Yelich was winning the MVP. This year, Adames has my vote.
