200 for the Kid From Jánico

Jánico

Willy Adames is the first major leaguer from Jánico, a small mountain town in the Santiago province of the Dominican Republic. His father Romulo worked construction and other jobs while raising the family there, and started taking Willy to baseball and softball fields when the boy was about 5. His mother Ana Sobeida raised Willy and his sister Nixzali in Jánico. As a boy he would sneak out of the house to swim in the rivers surrounding the town with friends. His father was strict.

Nine Years

He signed with the Detroit Tigers at 16 — $400,000 in July 2012 — and two years later Detroit traded him to Tampa Bay as part of the three-team deal that sent David Price to the Tigers. He debuted with the Rays on May 22, 2018. Four seasons in Tampa, four in Milwaukee, and now his second in San Francisco: 1,158 games across nine seasons. Milwaukee voted him team MVP in 2021 and again in 2022.

On August 20, 2026, Adames hit his 200th career home run as a Giant. Twenty of them came this season. He has 219 doubles, 609 RBI, and 621 runs across 4,272 at-bats and a .243 average. He has long been known for the way he fills a dugout — sliding down the dugout railing after a home run that helped extend a ten-game Brewers streak in 2021, pulling helmets off teammates after big hits. He marks his social media posts with NoBookBag, a Dominican expression about staying humble. Giants third baseman Matt Chapman has said no one has a bad word about him and that he sets the tone daily. Kevin Cash, his manager in Tampa, pointed to the constant energy that made the Rays better.

He is a shortstop for the Giants, and at 30 he goes by The Kid.

Reporting: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Durham Bulls, MLB.com, Spotrac, McCovey Chronicles. Career and biographical data: MLB StatsAPI, via the Fever engine.