Phillies Opposition Roadblock: Jonathon Villar
The Philadelphia Phillies are hosting the Milwaukee Brewers for the weekend at Citizens Bank Park, and a former Phils’ prospect is a Brew Crew roadblock to success for the home team.
The choices I have made thus far for the Phillies’ “Opposition Roadblock” players have been entertaining. I have enjoyed getting to know these players from other organizations on a deeper level.
Exploring their strengths and weaknesses, production numbers, and examining the ways in which they help their specific teams has added to my interest in the game, and hopefully to yours as well.
For this current series with Milwaukee, the choice actually hurts a bit. Jonathon Villar was a Philadelphia Phillies farm hand as recently as July of 2010.
Along with J.A. Happ and Anthony Gose, Villar was sent to the Houston Astros in the Roy Oswalt trade, which was the beginning of the great 2011 ‘Four Aces’ record-setting Phillies starting rotation.
In terms of that deal, Villar was considered almost an afterthought. Happ already had tasted some Major League success, and Gose was a highly rated prospect in the minor league system. Villar was baseball’s proverbial “throw-in” player.
In Villar’s first three years with the Houston organization he never eclipsed 300 at-bats. His best year was last season in very limited time, which mostly came as a result of the promotion and success of budding Astros’ star shortstop Carlos Correa.
In 116 at-bats during the 2015 season, Villar slashed .284/.339/.414 to go along with very mediocre production numbers.
As a result of Correa’s success in Houston, the Astros organization found Villar to be expendable. He was thus traded to the Brewers for Cy Sneed in November of 2015.
Traded for a second time, Villar has come out this season playing as though he has something to prove to both the Phillies and Astros organizations.
As the Brewers leadoff hitter, the 25-year old is having the best season of his career. He is the team’s starting shortstop, and is well on his way to breaking his own personal at-bat number with 190 already.
He is hitting for a .305/.409/.432 slash line, and his 19 stolen more bases are already more than in any other year of his career. If he continues on that pace, the speedy Villar will swipe 57 bases by year’s end.
In last night’s game, Villar was 2-5, including the back-breaking two-run homer in the top of the 9th inning off Jeanmar Gomez that stretched the Brew Crew’s lead to an insurmountable (for the Phillies anyway) three runs.
In the previous season matchup back in late April at Milwaukee, the Phillies had held their former farm hand to two hits in the entire series. He had that many in the first game of this four game set.
Villar’s usual game is not power, but speed, speed, and more speed. He is not going to hit many balls in the air, and uses his wheels to be effective.
If you look at his spray chart on Fangraphs, it looks as though they were trying to make a field done by Scott’s, the lawn people. It is completely covered in green dots, which stand for ground balls.
The switch-hitter has the same strengths and weaknesses from both sides of the plate. He likes the ball toward the middle of the zone. He is extremely weak on pitches up in the zone, which is easily the best way to attack a hitter who wants to put the ball on the ground.
When batting right-handed, Villar likes getting the ball middle-in, but from the left side, he wants to slap the ball on the outer half and use his legs.
He strikes out a ton more from the left side (37-17) and is hitting for a .277 average with an OPS of a .743 mark.
His numbers from the right side (.377 BA/1.085 OPS) are stronger, but more than likely a result of only 53 at bats from that side.
Again, being a switch hitter makes him a tough late game matchup. The issue really is keeping him off the base paths. If he manages to find his way on-base late in a game, he has the ability to change the outcome by running.
I mentioned earlier that Villar was difficult for me to write about because of his past. Do I believe he is a star? No. But he is a solid piece to a rebuilding team. I don’t think any Phillies fan would argue the idea of having him at shortstop with Freddy Galvis at second.
When J.P. Crawford is ready, the decision would be fairly easy. However, that point is moot, the past is the past. Villar is a Brewer and finding success right now. We can only hope that the Phillies contain him for the next three days so that it does not feel worse.