What Are the Giants Planning on Doing With Villalona?
Sorry I missed the thread yesterday– Big Game is sort of a 24 hour thing. Anyway, Stanford won in unspectacular fashion. The university needs to put in new turf. Find a lawn guy who knows his stuff. But I’ll tell you, they’ve always had a problem with the grass there. When we were kids we used to just be able to walk into the back of the stadium and play football on the field (total 1979 thing to do, can you imagine being able to do that today?). We’d go over there after it rained to play “mud” football. Me and a half dozen buddies were enough to turn that field into slop in 30 minutes that barely resembled a field. It’s unacceptable to have a D1 powerhouse playing on a field that the across-the-street Palo Alto Vikings would find sub par…….
Anyway, to the minor news of Villalona being placed on the 40 man roster. I say minor, because we probably wouldn’t be talking much about this guy if this were just strictly baseball news. Throw in the murder, arrest, payoff, dropped charges, 5 million dollar lawsuit against the Giants….well, now you have the makings of a good story. Or at least something to talk about.
Let’s refresh ourselves with who Villalona was as a baseball player— he was signed as a 16 year old and given a 2.1 million dollar bonus. He fiddled around (again, he was only 16) in 2007 through 3 levels in the system hitting 10 bombs in 474 total at bats. I didn’t calculate his OPS through those 3 stops but it was around .780. Then he goes to the Sally league and has a nice season with 17 hr’s in 500 at bats, hitting .263. He struck out a lot (118) and didn’t walk much (18). His OBP started to be a red flag (.312) which dragged his OPS a bit to a marginal .747. In 2009 he went to San Jose and had another decent year, hitting 9 bombs in 310 at bats. He kept striking out (73) and not walking (9) and his OBP dipped even further to an unacceptable .306. He checked in with a . 704 OPS—that wouldn’t pass for a first baseman at the mlb level and it’s unacceptable for the San Jose league. But remember, he was only 18 years old at the time. And Latin players, in general, don’t get out of the Dominican Republic by taking a lot of walks and having a spiffy OBP. They get noticed because they swing a big bat. They literally *swing* their way out of their country. But having said all that, up to this point in his career, Villalona was a great prospect who hadn’t really matched his prospect ranking with his production. Yet. Then his legal issues began and now that those are resolved, this is where we are today…..
What plans do the Giants have for Villalona? It has been reported that there were strong differences of opinion within the organization as to what to do with him. My guess is that they didn’t want to deal with the headache of the lawsuit and just decided to go ahead with him playing again in their system. After all, the charges against him were dropped. I strongly doubt that Villalona’s representatives leveraged the lawsuit as a way to make it on to the 40 man roster. The Giants just figured that once they decided to go ahead with his career in their system they might as well protect him from the Rule 5 draft. And that is a smart move since they might have lost him in that.
The best thing to do with Villalona is see what they have. He’s 21 now but he hasn’t played baseball in 2 years. My biggest concern with him would be to see what he looks like physically. This is a big kid who is probably WAY over his current listed weight of 200 lbs. It’s too bad the Giants couldn’t get someone down there to visit with him, see what he looks like and find out where his head is at in terms of playing baseball as a career. Since it’s all he’s ever known, I’m assuming he’s ready and wanting to play. But who knows? And if he’s ballooned up to 260 pounds was it really worth the Giants time in protecting him from the Rule 5 draft?
The best case scenario is that Villalona gets his career back on track and he starts putting up eye-catching numbers. Then we use him as trade bait. He was worth nothing to us if we hadn’t reinstated him and he would also be worth nothing to us if he had gotten drafted next week (I don’t think you receive compensation if one of your players is taken in the Rule 5 draft but maybe one of you can correct me if I’m wrong).
So the Giants did the smartest thing they could do with Villalona. They reinstated him and now don’t have to deal with a lawsuit. They put him on the 40 man so they can’t lose him to the draft. And the fact is, the kid has some skills. If he turns those skills into something that would fly at the major league level then he becomes valuable to the team. Will he ever play in San Francisco? Even if he’s successful from here on out I doubt he ever plays for us up here. I’m pretty certain there’s a chapter or 4 in The Giants Way that has to do with integrity, honoring the law, all that jazz. And being bogged down in a murder case is probably at least enough for the organization to pause and be concerned. But who knows, maybe The Giants Way got shoved into a box with the rest of Neukom’s things on his way out the door. It’s also possible that the brass could see Villalona as an insurance policy if Belt doesn’t pan out at first base.
I’m glad he’s getting a 2nd chance. Maybe this ordeal can be turned into a positive for him in terms of appreciating opportunities that you have in life. I would think that most 16 year old’s who are given 2.1 million might have a hard time staying focused and staying committed to long term life goals. Of course I don’t know a single thing about Villalona’s personality other than what I read his host family say about him after he was arrested (they liked him). His life was almost ruined by this. If he comes back hungry (for success, not food) then it could be a blessing in disguise. At the end of all of this, success on the baseball field will be good for him and for us. So from that stand point, I absolutely wish him the best and think that everything the Giants have done up till now with him was the correct way to deal with this complicated situation……..
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The Retro Game of the Day!!!!!!!!!
As we work our way through the ’78 season, let’s take a look at July 5th. The Giants had just lost 3 in a row and they turned, once again, to Ed Halicki to get them a win (I’m not picking Halicki games on purpose he just happened to be pitching on the 3 games I’ve picked so far). He was going against “Bad Ass” Bobby Shirley. I’ve got no idea if he was a bad ass or not but it was ’78 and everyone from that decade was either “old school” or a “bad ass”. Plus, he probably had to kick at least a few asses growing up as a kid for having the last name of a girl. Anyway, what I found interesting about this game is that the attendance was 8,394. That should cut down on the number of guys who will say they were there. Baha. Seriously, it’s the middle of Summer and the best you can do is 8k? Different time, different fan base, I guess. It seemed like a great game, the Giants scored 3 in the 4th and led 3-0 going to the 8th. Lavelle and Williams combined to blow the save in the 8th. The Padres discouragingly took a 4-3 lead in the 9th but the Giants TIED the game in the bottom of the inning on a Willie Mac pinch hit HR off Rollie Fingers (seriously, I am having a freaking BALL writing the names of all these players 🙂 ). They won it in the 10th off Fingers, not sure how, all that’s listed is that the winning run scored with 2 outs. Oscar Gamble in right field for the Padres? That is about as old school as it gets. He had 4 hits in the game. The Pads catcher was named Rick Sweet. That’s a rad name…….
A Place To Talk About Giants Baseball 
I guess the Reds won’t take Villalona and Pill for Votto:)
Ok, what other 8 prospects can we throw into that deal????
If he can hit play him. If not get rid of him ASAP.
NL really needs the DH despite the Flappers misgivings. Right now there is nowhere to play guys who don’t field so well. Warehousing people at First is not the answer. First demands more respect than what most guys are willing to give it.
As I’ve pointed out and all inteligent observers know- he could very well have been extorted , the presumption that he murdered anyone and paid off anyone to get out of it is not a fact. As Uribe about this. In his case, he claims the “Victim” in an alleged attempted murder tried to extort money from him to get what Juan claims are bogus charges droipped. The charges WERE dropped altough Uribe says he never paid the reported $25,000. We’ll never know but we do know that if he did pay it could been for one of two reasons:
To get phony charges dropped or to get legit charges dropped. And we don’t know what happened with Angel, either.As Baggarly posted awhile back :”It seems obvious to mention, but Villalona is innocent until proven guilty. It wouldn’t be the first time a Dominican player was a target of an extortion plot”
Now he IS innocent. Period.
I really don’t give a shit one way or the other except that this way he still has value to us. As you are pointing out, he may have been extorted. It’s also entirely possible he did it. As reported at sfgiants.com, he paid the family of the victim $135,000 (at least that’s the figure I recall, I don’t feel like looking it up……
The question isn’t as much whether he paid the family as what he paid for- to get phony charges dropped or legit ones. “it’s possible he did it”… that does seem to be the level of proof you require. It’s possible Juan did it. It’s possible Jose Uribe raped that woman in the DR..it’s possible that virtually anyone acquitted of a crime did it…
As far as Villalona’s status as a prospect, he’s not even a Giants’ Top Ten prospect anymore. He was out of shape before all of this, he’s now a one tool prospect ( power) best suited as a DH..
The analysis of his prospect status is from Baseball America
Well, before the ’09 season, the last time the rankings came out before he got arrested, he was like 44th in all of baseball– right around there I can’t recall the exact #. There was maybe 1 giant ahead of him on that list. I’m not sure how you or anyone could assess where he ranks in the system now. If he’s dedicated himself to the gm and gotten in shape, he could be good trade bait in a year. If he’s fatter than he was before he got locked up, then it was a huge mistake to give him a spot on the 40 man. Time will tell.
Baseball America did it, I’ll trust them, but hope they’re wrong. Funny, prejudging hium on a murder charge is cool, the top prospect site judging his prospect status is just sooooooooo wrong.,.
I didn’t pre judge shit but go ahead and make shit up so it suites your point– whatever that is.
Believe it or not, I was at that July 5, 1978 RGOTD. That was my 12th birthday. But my memory isn’t so good, I couldn’t tell ya if that was a day or night game. I know I was there with my mom and brother. And I do recall McCovey doing something heroic. But I thought it was a GW double off the RF wall. Must have been another game.
The ’78 Giants is one of my all-time favorite squads. I remember trying to emulate Whitfield’s batting stance in LL. And I just worshiped the ground that the “Ripper” walked on. I believe he and Vida represented the Giants in the ASG that year. Loved that team…
I was surprised at this move re: Villalona. Giants normally don’t want/tolerate controversy with players due to PR, except of course, the ultimate in Bonds and ‘roids. I think it was the money that drove this decision. They have a $2M investment, they wanted to see where it goes…
Ozzie as a Pad, Winfoeld as well. Don’t remember this game, but these guys were opretty tough, if not any good. Oscar Gamble was a Pad? Forgot that totally.
I don’t recall Tenace as a Pad either…anyway you can get the box score in there, flav?
Ozzie in those days of course, was all “good field no hit”, about .220 avg every year.
This was in those brown and yellow unis too, right?
Here’s the box score.
http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/SFN/SFN197807050.shtml
About to watch the late game…anyone see the story on Tiki Barber, one of the more annoying of the former player/analysts that surround the pre game shows (which I avoid like plague)? Apparently, a year and a half ago the 36 yr old Barber decides to dump his wife of 11 yrs for a 24 year old NBC intern, to whom he is now engaged. At the time, the wife was pregnant with twins, and there were already two previous kids in the family..
So dumbfuck has 4 kids to support, and of course alimony settlement with the wife, currrently under negotiation in the courts. All I can think of is that Johnny Taylor song from the 70s, “Cheaper to Keep Her.”
Barber is a classic case of the effect of East Coast bias in sports. ESPN and other media were convinced that Barber was a much beloved and recognized sports personality because he had played for the NEW YORK Giants. The reality was that the vast majority of the nation had little interest in him.
He’s a fine dresser.Jerry, Steve, and Prime would approve..
tiki took about 30 seconds to throw Eli under the proverbial bus. “he can’t win”. “the team doesn’t trust/believe in him”.
oh. then he won a super bowl.
tiki has been trying to recover ever since.
TOTAL punk. no use for this guy.
since we seem to be all about court cases, next witness.
For everybody but Dilfer being the Super Bowl winning QB is good enough that the dude might as well die- he’s achieved the greatest thing in life already..
Twin, thx for the link to the box score, I luv reading those. Nice to see Bill toasted almon as PH, always liked that guy, solid utility player. Mad dog whit and clark all over .300, Craig mgr of the Pads, Sf pins the L on Fingers.
You’re welcome. I’m always happy to help nice people.
Well, it could be worse, guys–we could be NY Giants fans. At least our football teams won this weekend..well, uh..besides Stanfood….
perhaps you missed it . . . stanford 31, cal 28.
9 out of 10 people (the 10th is a weenie) post that as a win.
I remember reading a Sporting Green one day that blared something like ‘743 watch Giants lose to Braves.’ Living nearly 300 miles away, it was astounding to me no one would want to go the park. I’ll try and find the date and year, but my recollection was it was in the mid-70s. Trying a quick search, I found a variety of Candlestick data at baseball-almanac.com. When you read that the original ‘Stick outfield dimensions were 330/397/420/397/330, it gives you a new appreciation for the power-hitting of Mays, et. al., especially before the stadium was filled in–and why 5’10” second-basemen didn’t hit 20 HRs as they do now. Anyway, by the 80s, the fences were moved 20-30 feet in.
One thing I noticed about today’s Retro lineup: there are at least three African-American starters on each team. My 2011 memory may be fading with fall, but I think that would be rare to find today.
I remember Bob Lurie going on the post-game radio show toward the end of one season to beg fans to come to games at Candlestick. The Giants were contending for the division at the time and still the crowds were minuscule.
Yeah I was at a game (it might have been the one you are talking about) where the attendance was under 1,000.
VERY weird. It was like watching the game in the grand canyon. Razzing players a was pretty easy, though. Everyone could hear anything said by anyone if it was over a whisper.
I went to an O’s game vs. Royals in the late ’80s that not only featured rain delays but extra innings. Think we got out of there at 2 or 3 in the morning. At the end, there must have 500 people total in the park. Too small for any echo. Felt like a high school game, but with quite a number of fans having drunk themselves silly. With little background noise, the taunts and jeers directed by fans at players, in this case Bo Jackson, could actually be heard, which surprised fan and player alike.
“There’s about 5,000 fans, the rest of them are assholes.”
Charles (Chili) Davis
I think it was more like 7-8,000 but the rest of the sentiment was true. I was going to about 25-30 games/year in the 80’s. One year I saw 1 win! One, the whole year! That might of been the year of 100 loses (I was at that game) but it might not.
I also remember when SF was fighting it out with the Braves for the NL West title, and my buddies wanted me to go with them for a wed. day game. Placed was packed, and with the horrible traffic pattern into the Stick from the peninsula, they got to their seats about 3rd inning.
We used to usually park in the dirt lot, but even then getting in and out of that place when it was crowded was an f-ing nightmare.
Yeah, if the crowd was going to be big (fairly rare at times) we’d park on Geneva and walk under the freeway. It was free, and you could drive thru Bisbrane to get out, and miss a lot of traffic.
This was better for football games.
I usually got there early. We knew of the key place to park so that you went right out the gate, left on whatever street that was and out to the freeway. because of where we were parked we beat 80% of the rest out the gate so it was pretty straight forward. I lived in south san jose back then so wouldn’t get home until midnight. then had to get up at 5 or 6 to get to work. brutal. the things you do when you’re young. it used to really piss me off when the radio announcers would start whining about how late a game was going. First, they were getting paid to be there and second the probably weren’t getting up at 5.
That same baseball-almanac.com data showed average from 1970 through 1977 averaging under 10,000 except for two years, including the Pennant-contending 1971, dipping twice to 6,400 average. I think those are the years we’re talking about. They must have paid the players in beer and peanuts.
Those dirt lots were something. In this day and age, hard to believe a franchise would do that to their fans. Anyone remember the MUNI ‘X’ express buses to games at the ‘Stick? Don’t know how long that lasted’ but I took several of those back in the day…
On Sunday’s topic again, Baseball America’s statement saying that Angel would not be even a Giants’ top ten prosect now was not based on idle speculation but in large part on how he was progressing even before his arrest. He was ranked 33 in all of baseball pre-2008, 44 pre-2009, those aren’t updated during the season. Many of the issues that Craig notes, plus his conditioning, were already causing concern. The idea that a couple years in a DR hoosegow wouldn’t further drop his ranking is a pretty absurd notion. In a step I’m not willing to take quite yet, however, one writer calls him a “poor man’s Wily Mo Pena”..yikes.
With all that said, he’s only 21 – the average age for “Low-A” league players, where I’d hope they start him. With a new start, we can only hope for the best for the young man..
Wow, tragic news frm the Netherlands, of all places:
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/Mariners-outfielder-Greg-Halman-killed-in-Nether?urn=mlb-wp27353
The first year that they contended after I arrived ( ’74) was 1978 ( it took awhile before I made a difference). I see they drew pretty well that year- over 1,700,000 4th in the league. But they didn’t contend again until ’82, and that was coming off the strike year. They only drew 1,200,000. That was 11th of the 12 teams despite being totally in contention into the last week- Bums eliminated us here on the last weekend… then we returned the favor on Morgan’s HR. Here Joe does something very rare, indeed…
I was at the Friday night game where we got the boot. I forget who was pitching but it was someone who wasn’t a front line guy but was having a decent season. I was also there Sunday when we repaid the favor.