Spend a few minutes chatting with Giants third baseman David Villar and your first impression is likely to land somewhere between personable and polite. He’ll give thoughtful answers to your questions. He’ll even be gentle when he has to correct you.
Now that he has made his major league debut, now that he has achieved some success at the game’s highest level, and now that he has been declared the Giants’ incumbent at third base by no less an authority than club president Farhan Zaidi, how does his outlook this spring differ from where he was last spring?
Advertisement
“Well, I didn’t have a locker here a year ago, so …” Villar said.
Oh, right. It’s easy to forget. Villar wasn’t invited to major-league camp last March. Under normal circumstances, his banner 2021 season, when he hit 20 home runs to set the affiliate record at Double-A Richmond, would have earned him a locker with the big leaguers. For a week or two, at least. But by the time owners and players finally agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement and ended a 99-day lockout in early March, teams didn’t have the time or reps to spare in an accelerated camp. So Villar lockered at the minor league complex, slung an equipment bag over his shoulder whenever summoned to fill out an exhibition roster, and happily soaked up random at-bats at the back end of games.
“Sixth or seventh inning, coming in cold,” he said, smiling. “But hey, that’s part of the business. You’ve got to earn your stripes here.”
Villar has a locker at Scottsdale Stadium now, and it comes with more than a place to hang his street clothes. The combined 36 home runs he hit last year (27 for Triple-A Sacramento, nine in 156 major league at-bats) were the most that anyone in the Giants organization had amassed in a single season since Barry Bonds hit 45 in 2004. His consistent power production in the upper minors, combined with the .897 OPS he posted following a second promotion on Sept. 2, convinced management that Villar earned more than merely the right to compete for an everyday job. He has already been penciled in as their third baseman.
Villar is the first to point it out: pencils have erasers.
“It’s a blessing to have the front office behind me and believe in me,” Villar said. “It does give me confidence. I never thought I’d be at this point in my career. But I would never say, `Yeah, this is my position in the big leagues.’ Yeah, it’s great to hear they believe in me, but they’re not going to just hand me a job. It’s never like that. I’ve got to come here and implement some of the positives I’ve created in this offseason and show what I can do in camp.
Advertisement
“To have them behind me really means a lot. But I’d never set my expectations just because I had a good month. It’s a long season. Things can change quickly. My first month in the big leagues compared to the last five weeks, I was a totally different ballplayer. So I know it can change.”
The roster is set up to handle any changes. The Giants have two other right-handed corner infielders, Wilmer Flores and J.D. Davis, who will play significant roles this season. And Villar is one of few players in consideration for the opening day roster who has minor league options. If you’ve ever tried to handicap spring roster decisions, you understand that the options game is often the deciding factor. Teams usually seek to protect as much of their player inventory as possible. You never want to sacrifice potential depth at the outset of a 162-game season.
While Villar, Flores and Davis might appear to be potential redundancies, Zaidi said he anticipates that there will be at least 300 to 400 at-bats for each player this season. They are all likely to be in the lineup (at the infield corners and designated hitter) against left-handed starters. And because the Giants are the most aggressive team in the major leagues at deploying their bench, there will be plenty of occasions when they pinch hit in the fifth or sixth inning and remain in the game.
But redundancies often do not survive the week-to-week vagaries of a season. The Giants are thin on middle-infield depth. If Brandon Crawford or Thairo Estrada gets nicked up, then it might become a priority to call up someone like lefty-hitting Isan Diaz or Brett Wisely, both of whom are on the 40-man roster.
That’s what makes the Giants’ declaration about Villar so remarkable. There are aspects of his game that he still has to prove. There are reasons for concern. There isn’t much of a major league track record and no glowing draft pedigree (Villar was an 11th-round pick out of the University of South Florida, where he wasn’t deemed talented enough to play in the Cape Cod League as a college junior) to fall back upon. And there’s plenty of coverage for his role on the club.
Advertisement
But in the Giants’ estimation, Villar simply deserves a shot.
“I feel what he’s done has gone under the radar a bit,” Zaidi said. “We obviously have other guys like Wilmer and J.D., other guys in camp. But we do see him as the incumbent and hope he takes it and runs with it as an everyday guy.”
What’s left to prove? That his power will play in San Francisco, for starters. Villar’s power up to now is all function and no flash. His average exit velocity (86.8 mph) ranked in just the 24th percentile among major league hitters last season. He’s fully aware that all nine of his big league home runs came on the road. He has consistently demonstrated the ability to hit the ball out of the park to right-center. But those parks didn’t have a 25-foot brick arcade in right field.
He’s eager to get that first homer in San Francisco out of the way. But he’s not curious about how his power will play over the long haul at the Giants’ waterfront park.
“No, I think I’ve seen it,” said Villar, who hit .182 in a small sample at home but collected a triple and two doubles among his 10 hits. “Everybody knows it’s hard to hit out to right field. But there are a lot of hits to be had out there. I’m sure there are easier parks, but I’m not going to complain. I’m at the big league level for the San Francisco Giants. I know I can hit in that ballpark. I’m excited to do it.”
It’s Villar’s defensive work that will be most scrutinized in this spring camp. The Giants are betting that a series of incremental improvements will be enough to address last season’s group that ranked worst in the major leagues with minus-53 in defensive runs saved. Club officials and coaches can afford to be patient with Villar if he’s slumping at the plate for a spell. They’ll probably have less patience if he hasn’t demonstrated that he’s an appreciably better defender than Flores or Davis.
So Villar trained this winter on improving his first-step explosiveness and overall range. He took bench coach Kai Correa’s advice to practice specific plays, like setting his feet and throwing over the top after making backhanded pickups. Raising his arm slot should result in throws that have more carry and less cut.
Advertisement
“You have to get that arm slot to where if that play happens, you have it in your back pocket,” Villar said. “You can’t rely on flinging it. So I’ll work on that continuously in camp. The other arm angles are pretty comfortable for me. I’ve always liked throwing on the run.”
Villar laughed when reminded that in one of his first games in the major leagues, he stepped in front of four-time Gold Glove shortstop Crawford and nearly collided with him. It’s a mistake he didn’t repeat.
“We had constant conversations about that,” Villar said. ” He’s been awesome about it. He’s given me the comfort of saying, ‘Look, if you can make a play and you think it’s going to be easier for you, go get it.’ But with his range and the plays he can make, he’s head and shoulders above anyone I’ve played with at shortstop. So I have to know where he’s positioned, especially now when he won’t be (shifted) over.”
A little extra range at third base will be important for more than the obvious reasons now that teams will be required to play two infielders on either side of second base. Infielders also must have both feet on the infield dirt when the pitch is released. In past seasons, third basemen would often play on the cut of the outfield grass for slower baserunners, increasing their effective lateral range. Now even if Albert Pujols comes out of retirement and stands in the batter’s box, third basemen will have to stay on the dirt.
Zaidi cited Villar’s defensive metrics in the minor leagues along with internal evaluations from the player development staff as reasons to believe that the Giants haven’t seen Villar’s best defense at the major league level. They think enough of his range and athleticism that they plan to give him exposure this spring at second base. If he shows enough proficiency, he could snag a few starts against left-handed pitchers there when Thairo Estrada slides over to shortstop to give Crawford a day off.
“He looks great physically and we think he can handle the range at second base even in a post-shifting world,” Zaidi said. “So that’ll be something to watch for. He’ll get a lot of work there.”
Being branded the incumbent confers some benefits for Villar. He can focus more on process and preparation and less on his Cactus League OPS. There’s a sense of comfort, but not complacency.
“That’s how I’m seeing it,” Villar said. “I’m here to prove I’m the best player and I’m capable.”
(Top photo of David Villar: Sergio Estrada / USA Today)
