Brewers history: Milwaukee swings major early-season trade for franchise-changing shortstop

Willy Adames willingly left the Milwaukee Brewers after the 2024 season concluded, though it's hard to blame him seeing as he coaxed $182 million out of the San Francisco Giants. Now that San Francisco is imploding in real time (and may end up trading him), it's easy to say he made the wrong decision, but there were never realistic expectations that the Crew could afford his services in the long term.

Then again, he did spend nearly four full seasons in Milwaukee, courtesy of a 2021 trade that wound up defining the beginning of the franchise's run of success this decade. Four years ago today, on May 21, 2021, the Brewers and Tampa Bay Rays agreed to a four-player swap that landed Adames and Trevor Richards in Wisconsin and J.P. Feyereisen and Drew Rasmussen in Florida.

We'll break down all of those moving parts below, but the one stat that truly matters: After acquiring Adames, the Brewers won three division titles in four years before he left in free agency.

Willy Adames changed everything for the Brewers when he was traded to Milwaukee four years ago today

Adames, of course, was the star of the deal both when it was made and in the aftermath. He had a 20-homer season on his résumé when he arrived, though he went on to blow that out of the water with the Brewers. Over 548 regular season games in Milwaukee, he contributed 15.8 fWAR, the sixth-best mark among shortstops league-wide during that span.

Be it his 107 home runs, .780 OPS, or sterling defense, Adames did anything and everything to help the Brewers put a winning product on the field. He was also rarely unavailable, playing 310 of a possible 324 contests in his final two seasons with the team.

His quality was actually something of a double-edged sword in regard to the original trade with the Rays; competing for a division title and in need of power around the trade deadline, the Brewers quickly flipped Richards as part of the Rowdy Tellez deal.

In effect, the Rays were working within a two-for-one framework, and they did pretty well under those circumstances. Rasmussen has been brilliant when healthy (2.78 ERA in nearly 500 innings), but that's been a rare occurrence outside of his All-Star campaign in 2025. Meanwhile, Feyereisen was great as well, but he couldn't even last a full season before a shoulder injury ended his tenure in Tampa Bay.

Even though Rasmussen would look like a nice piece of the rotation right now, the Brewers make that Adames trade 100 out of 100 times if given the chance. They were swept out of the playoffs in both 2019 and 2020 after their 2018 NLCS run, and they needed a star-power spark in the worst way.

Adames delivered that and then some. He became the face of this team as their reign of terror in the NL Central began. For nearly any price, that's a worthwhile addition.

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