David Villar has played 81 games in his major league career, and he already knows how fickle baseball can be.
Last year, Villar was the exciting prospect, the infielder who was going to come up from AAA and save the team with his youth and energy and power and youth. Then he didn’t. He didn’t do nothing right — he had an .809 OPS after his 13th game, largely due to a strong walk rate — but he wasn’t a star about to go supernova. He was a G-type main sequence star, like the Sun, and then as July dragged on into August he was a brown dwarf, and then he was a Sacramento River Cat again.
It was in September that he came back and hit enough for the team to consider him the presumptive 2023 starting third baseman; it was in September that he hit 8 homers (okay, two of them were in October, but everyone in baseball just counts that as part of September) to open some eyes; it was in September that he got to play every day and show what he could do.
So David Villar came into 2023 as the starting third baseman, and he’s fallen on his face.
Admittedly, it’s not ideal. You don’t want a .149/.242/.322 line in your lineup, and a team like the Giants with so many important pieces struggling can’t just give him the time to figure it out. They’re contractually obligated to give that rope to Mitch Haniger and Michael Conforto and Brandon Crawford, so it’s tough to mix in one more. Ergo, Casey Schmitt.
Schmitt, of course, was called up on Tuesday and immediately had two two-hit games in his first two games, and I’m not going to talk about him because I hate it when my newsletters are overly topical. Can you imagine getting excited about one of these and sharing it with your friends who are also super into Casey Schmitt? Horrible thought. No, I’ll stick with the guy who’s probably getting sent down today, thank you very much.
Because Crawford is scheduled to come off the IL today, the Giants need a roster spot. With Schmitt on the roster, to go along with Wilmer Flores and JD Davis, the team is kinda all full up on right-handed infielders, making Villar, underperforming so far with a hot rookie seemingly taking his place, the odd man out.
But does he deserve it? Sure, his results are bad, but is the process bad too, or is this a case of small sample size? Well, let’s see what Mr. Statcast has to say:
There are a couple good things. Villar barrels the ball way more than the average hitter, and he’s exceptional at not chasing bad pitches. His defense, too, grades out very highly, even though his arm surprisingly does not.
But the rest of it tells a sad story. There’s just too much swing-and-miss in his game right now. He swings through pitches too often, which means he strikes out too often, which means he can’t hit for a high average. His max exit velocity is sub-par, his average exit velocity is smack-dab in the middle of Averageville, and he doesn’t hit the ball hard particularly often.
The swing-and-miss comes from both pitches inside and out of the strike zone; Villar is unusually bad at making contact with both. He’s making contact with 77% of balls in the zone, which would have been fifth worst among qualified batters last year; he’s also making contact with just 35.7% of balls outside the zone, which would have been the worst mark among qualified hitters last year. Combine those two things and you see why his expected batting average is just a shade above .200, in the bottom 7% of the league, according to Statcast.
So what happened? Why has David Villar of 2022 not shown up in 2023? Let’s take a look. In 2022, Villar’s expected wOBA was .285, which is basically not a major league hitter. His actualy wOBA was .344, which is a pretty good major league hitter. In 2023, his expected wOBA is around .300, which is, generously, a marginal major league hitter. His actual wOBA is .253. The numbers say he should have been worse last year, but he got lucky. The numbers say he should be better this year, but he’s getting unlucky. But the numbers very consistently say that he should not be good.
Why? What is he doing wrong? Obviously, the whiffs are a big factor, and we can’t minimize those. But he also doesn’t hit the ball hard consistently enough. Yes, he’s good at the relatively rare event of barreling a ball, but regular, everyday hard hit balls? Below average, from someone who should be a power hitter.
Last year, he was able to hold his own against sinkers and sliders, and then smack 4-seamers, curveballs, and cutters around. This year, all he’s really hitting are 4-seamers and sweepers. Everything else is eating him up. He’s especially collapsed against breaking pitches; last year, he wasn’t particularly good against them, with a .294 wOBA, but this year, he’s almost hopeless, with a .196 wOBA. That translates to 3-for-33 with 2 homers, with all of those hits coming against the sweeper, the rarest of the breaking balls that anyone throws today. Against curves and sliders, he’s a combined 0-for-25. You just can’t be successful if the only thing you can hit is a fastball.
All in all, this adds up to the portrait of a hitter who should be replaced, hence Casey Schmitt. Villar isn’t doing enough things well to stay on the roster when he’s not producing. I don’t know if they have curveballs in AAA, but he needs to find out. He has a whole future predicated on his ability to identify and then hit sliders and curves. The Giants, too, would like to see him improve. David Villar was supposed to be a big part of their future. He still can be, but not if he’s hitting like this.
Bummer. I wuz rooting for him big-time when he was in the Minors, and happy to see him succeed last Sept. Now there's a traffic jam in the IF. I hope they trade him so he stays in the Bigs.