Angel in the Infield: Visa Approved

According to a Baseball America article (saw the link on DrB's in the comments), Angel Villalona gets his work visa approved and will be in camp with the Giants during spring training.  He'll be joining the team next week.

ogc thoughts

Most reports were that Villalona would be stuck in his native DR.  Or rather, most speculation.  BA in their Giants prospect Q&A recently, noted that they had not heard anything new and doubt that "he will ever be allowed back in the U.S." (got that from DrB's report on the Q&A).  His getting the visa makes more sense to me, the State Department can only put up so many legal road blocks when Angel was not convicted of anything.

Not that he was necessarily innocent either, we'll never know exactly what happened that terrible night, but the victim's family has moved on with their settlement, the district attorney decided that there was not enough evidence to hold him any longer, and now the State Department has granted him his visa.  Nobody can prove otherwise and for all we know, the victim's family squeezed Villalona because he was the only rich person in the fracas.  It definitely will be a shadow on the rest of his career and something brought up anytime he is in the news.

That said, it made perfect sense that the State Department would make it hard for him to return, and they threw the best and apparently only pitch that they had:  whether he was an elite player which would make him eligible to come into the U.S. on a work visa.  And he had no proof and after sitting around in jail for so long and/or without competitive play, he had to be rusty and some players never come back from that, particularly players who had problems keeping his weight off as Angel did.

So he played in the Dominican Summer League last season - hard to remember, but he's still only 22 YO for this season - and he hit .303/.430/.497/.927, knocking 7 homers in 44 games.  Admittedly, the competition there was not minor league caliber, but he could at least say that he was among the elite there, making it harder for anyone to make further objections to him returning to the U.S.  He was 8th in OPS, though as a 21 YO last season, he was clearly among the oldest guys playing there plus he had two years of US minor league ball under his belt, so he should have been expected to dominate there.  He was only 15th in OBP and 10th in SLG, but there were few who were good in both, leading to 8th in OPS.  It helped that he was 7th in homers, and that was also because he played about 30% less games than other players.  Had he played at that rate for the 66 or so games that the top players played, he would have been first or second instead.  This dominance made sense because most reports were that he worked out while sidelined with his legal problems and got himself into better shape.

And that is why he was such a prized prospect and highly rated:  he could hit the long ball.   At 17 YO, in the Sally, where pitchers had 5 more years of age and experience on average over him, and in his first full season U.S. league, he hit 17 homers and that was good for a tie for 12th in the league.  One more homer and he would have been tied for 8th, two more tied for 5th.  Others near his age, 18 YO:  Jesus Montero, 17 homers; Freddie Freeman, 18 homers; Matt Dominguez, 18 homers; Michael Burgess (19 YO), 18 homers.

He was also tied for 12th in doubles with 29.  That is usually a precursor for more homers as he got older and more developed.  Montero had 34 and Freeman 33, but they both had roughly 10% more AB, so basically at the same rate of production as Montero and Freeman.   Where he lacked relative to them was his poor batting average, he just struck out a lot more than they did, hence why they are better.  Still, he was close to them.  And the projections back then were talking about him having 30-40 homerun power.

He did not hit that well in SJ, but his 9 homers tied him for 42nd in the Cal League, impressive since he only played 74 games and most of the top prospects there played around 130 games, almost double.  If he had a similar number of ABs as the leaders did, he would have had 15 homers, which would have been good for tie at 14th, and that is great because he was only 18 YO and there was not even one teenager in the leader list other than him.  All the other hitters were mostly 4 years older than him, like a certain Buster Posey, who had 13 homers in similar AB.   He has hit for power everywhere he has gone for significant amount of playing time.

It will be interesting where the Giants eventually place him in the farm system.  He was last in San Jose, and he hit OK there for an 18 YO, hitting .267/.306/.397/.704 with 9 HR in an injury marred season, limiting him to 74 games.  But since he's been rusty and out of competitive play, they might let him go to Augusta, to get acclimated again to full-season minor league baseball, then let his bat decide whether he needs to move up or not. In any case, he was once a Top 100 ranked prospect, even though he was so young and inexperienced, so if he can return with any resemblance to the prospect he was before, that would be a huge boost to our farm system.

In addition, despite his weight issues, reports were that he worked hard at continuing to take fielding at 3B even while the Giants played him at 1B, and that he worked off a lot of that "baby-fat" that he carried when he was in San Jose, while he was incarcerated.  If he really can play 3B, that would give us another home run hitting 3B in the farm system and with Duvall around, between the two of them would make the future of 3B look pretty good for us, as we could go with Posey once Sandoval needs to move to 1B, or if either makes it all the way up, they could take over at that point at 3B.  And even if he stays at 1B, Belt could always move to LF, where he played previously in high school and did OK there in the majors in very limited play.

Options are always good, especially when they are blue chip prospects, as Angel once was and might be again for the Giants.  It will be a catch-up season for him, a make good season, as while he is still young, 22 YO is getting old for an elite prospect, and he will need to prove that he's back from his injury and his long layoff, before he will get ranked high again, if ever.  I think that he has the skills, but does he have the will?  Can he keep the weight off (enough)?

He also has a huge negative that has ruined the prospect ranking of other prodigious homerun hitters:  he strikes out a heck of a lot.  He has also walked a lot too, but his strikeout rates need to go down a lot.  While it was partially explainable by the fact that he was facing pitchers with 4-5 years or more experience and age over him, that was no longer true last summer, in fact, he was the old guy in the league, and he still struck out 40 times in only 155 AB (only 74% contact rate; 85%+ for good hitters).  But he also walked a lot too, boosting his OK .303 average to a great .430 OBP.  This is something he will need to solved, not fully but enough, before he ever wears a major league uniform.