On a sunny September morning at Comerica Park, Willy Adames had his mind on October. He took the field with a trainer and jogged on the outfield grass. He played catch with a teammate down the first base line. He smiled and shouted "Jefe!!" when his manager emerged from the clubhouse, and then he took grounders at short. He danced around the dirt as he nears a return from a quad injury ahead of the playoffs. He skipped off the infield and into the dugout, the visitor's dugout at Comerica Park.
Later that afternoon, the Tigers started Harold Castro at shortstop. They had started Niko Goodrum the night before. Who knows who they'll start there next season. They've tried five different shortstops in the past five months and only widened the biggest hole in their future. They could fill it this winter, no doubt. They could cut a check for someone like Carlos Correa and end a waiting game they're likely to lose. It's just a shame they didn't wait longer on Adames.
"The first year I got to the big leagues, Miggy told me the same thing," Adames said Wednesday during a brief stop in Detroit. "Like, 'We don't have a shortstop, I don't know why they traded you. You would fit right into this team at a great position.'"
The Brewers traded for Adames in May, seven years after the Tigers traded him to the Rays. Milwaukee might not worry about shortstop for the next decade. At 26, Adames is a star. He's batting .294 with a .904 OPS for the Brewers and built a sneaky MVP case in a matter of months; it's no coincidence Milwaukee has the best record in baseball since his arrival. Adames won't be a free agent until 2025. He was an amateur free agent nine years ago when he signed with Detroit.
At the time, the Tigers were ripping off division titles. They reached the World Series a few months after Adames signed his contract, and they reached the ALCS the year he turned pro. One year later, he was one of the top prospects in the organization, a smooth-fielding shortstop with pop at the plate. He was 18 years old and trying not to dream too big.
"When you start, you start in the Dominican Summer League," Adames said. "The big leagues is so far away. You have to climb the stairs. Obviously you have that dream. They were playing great, they went to the World Series, they were going to the playoffs and obviously I wanted to be part of it. I got traded the next year."
He got traded because the Tigers were going for it, and because the Rays insisted on Adames in exchange for David Price. It was a deal then-GM Dave Dombrowski said he couldn't turn down: "We don't advertise him out there as being available. But we had talked about that if we were trading for David Price, he couldn't stand in our way." Dombrowski wanted to win and didn't have time to wait.
With Price joining Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer, the past three AL Cy Young winners formed a rotation for the ages. If pitching wins in October, the Tigers couldn't lose now. The three-headed monster was slain in the first round. The following October, Price was pitching for Toronto and Adames was one of the top 50 prospects in baseball. He said the trade to Tampa helped launch his career.
"Obviously it was a surprise because that was my first year in the States," he said. "I was so young I didn't understand what that means for me. I didn't even know that was one of the biggest things that happened in my career, at such a young age. So for me, it was a shock. I think that was a great thing that happened in the beginning of my career because it put my name out there for baseball people who didn't know anything about me."
Adames vaulted into the top 25 prospects in baseball by 2015 and made his big-league debut in 2018 at the age of 22. The Tigers' shortstop at the time was Jose Iglesias, one of the few remnants of a razed roster, playing out the final year of his contract with Detroit. Their shortstop of the future was an unknown. Still is, three years later. They have high hopes for Ryan Kreider, but they don't have Adames, who admitted "obviously, for me, you think about" what could have been in Detroit.
"But things happen," he said. "This is a business and now I'm with the Milwaukee Brewers. I was in Tampa for seven years and now I'm here and hopefully I'll be here for the rest of my career."
The fans were filing into Comerica Park to watch a team bound for October. Adames sat on a bat rack and said he won't rush his comeback with the division in the bag. He said he's looking forward to some "champagne showers" with the fans, maybe as soon as this weekend. He said his team has the arms to pose an "amazing pitching match-up" in the World Series. He came to his feet and turned toward the clubhouse, the visitor's clubhouse at Comerica Park.
