Born in Willemstad, Adriana began his professional baseball career after being taken in the 15th round of the 1991 MLB Draft by the Toronto Blue Jays.

In 1993, the 22-year-old was struggling with the AA Knoxville Smokies, where his line read .215-.308-.243 as the backup to Joe Lis Jr. Sharnol moved to the Liga Mexicana de Beisbol in 2000, returning to Newark for a brief .118 spell.

Splitting the year between the Cafeteros de Córdoba and the Campeche Pirates, he had a .326/~.441/.603 line, stole 24 in 36 tries, homered 29 times and led the Liga with 113 runs scored.

In 2001, he had another 20-20 year (21 SB, 28 HR, five shy of league leader Boi Rodriguez), batting .313 and slugging .581 for Campeche while scoring 89 runs.

He was named the Cup All-Star first baseman (beating out Yasuyuki Saigo, Olmedo Saenz, Tae-kyun Kim and Kendry Morales) and tied for third in homers, one behind Takashi Yoshiura and Audes de Leon.

Adriana bounced back in 2005, as the 34-year-old veteran hit .368/.452/.634 for the San Luis Potosi Tuneros, leading the Liga in runs (105) and total bases (277), stealing 32 (caught 21 times though, the most) and smacking 25 homers.

In the 2008 Summer Olympics, as the captain of the Dutch squad, the first baseman hit .217-.250-.391 with only two runs and one RBI in 7 games; he still wound up with the third-best OPS on a poor-hitting team.