Haudricourt: Brewers have decision to make at second base after Villar's poor season

LOS ANGELES – As the Brewers proceed with a rebuilding plan that is making noticeable progress at this stage, they’ve tried to identify players with whom they can confidently move forward.

At the end of the 2016 season, Jonathan Villar was placed in the “keeper” category. He performed so well offensively while playing shortstop and third base, the Brewers awarded him the starting second-base job in the spring and jettisoned Scooter Gennett, allowing Cincinnati to claim him on waivers with no return other than salary relief.

Then came 2017.

Oops.

If you rank the top disappointments on the Brewers’ roster to this point, you’d put the 26-year-old Villar in the No. 1 spot with little deliberation. He has been an offensive bust since Day 1, producing a .631 OPS entering Saturday, compared to his .826 mark of a year ago. And he hasn’t exactly been a Gold Glover at second base, either, despite his stated preseason goal of becoming one.

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All of which begs the question: What exactly do the Brewers have in Villar? Is he the dynamic yet mistake-prone leadoff hitter of 2016 or the mostly ineffective player of this season?

“How do you judge him?” David Stearns said, repeating the question. “I think it’s the right question. I just don’t have a good answer for you.”

Which begs the second question: Do you give Villar a tiebreaking third season in 2018 to see if he rebounds and rewards the faith placed in him after last season? Or do you come up with a Plan B at second base moving forward?

It’s a general manager’s job, particularly in a rebuilding phase, to evaluate the present while also planning for the future. But, with the surprising Brewers fighting for a playoff berth and veteran Neil Walker added via trade to hold down second base, Stearns has time to mull that situation.

“For us, that’s really an off-season discussion,” he said. “We haven’t even broached what 2018 positions are going to look like yet. We have a long ways to go. At this point, we are fully invested and engrossed in the last five weeks of baseball, to see how this plays out.”

If Villar never recaptures the magic of 2016, when he was given his first chance to play regularly, the Brewers will thank their lucky stars that he turned down overtures for a $23 million contract extension during spring training. Per their policy, the Brewers do not reveal or confirm such discussions, but they did take place.

Instead, Villar and his agent, Melvin Roman, chose to play on a $555,000 contract leading to the player’s first arbitration year, when salaries can take significant leaps with banner on-field results. At this particular point in time, it appears Villar made a colossal mistake in turning down the club’s offer.

Only Villar knows if he pressed after making that decision to prove he is worth more. We’ve seen it in the past with pre-arbitration breakthrough players such as Casey McGehee and Jean Segura. They felt they are being undervalued, turned down club-friendly extensions and went out to prove they were low-bid, without success.

Not surprisingly, Stearns declined to offer an opinion on Villar’s decision to gamble on his future.

“I’m going to steer clear of that, even though it’s been reported,” he said. “I prefer not to get into contract discussions.”

Perhaps the Brewers were asking too much of Villar to be the regular second baseman. He admitted it broke his heart when he was moved off shortstop to accommodate top prospect Orlando Arcia. Villar looked so uncomfortable at third base, the Brewers traded for Travis Shaw, who is having a big year.

That made it second base or bust for Villar, and so far it has been bust.

“I don’t think that’s the case,” Stearns said. “I think Jonathan came into spring training with a clear mind, playing second base. I don’t think the move to second base has impacted his offense.”

In offering an extension, Stearns said he did not make a knee-jerk reaction on Villar’s value after one strong season with the Brewers. Villar played the previous three seasons in Houston, where Stearns worked as assistant general manager, so there was a familiarity level there.

“I have more experience with him from his time in Houston,” Stearns said. “As an organization, we have lots of information on him from his time in the minor leagues and years and years of scouting reports. All of that goes into the evaluation of a player.

“How we weight those various aspects, we don’t have to make that determination right now. We have more than a month, at least, left of baseball. There are going to be opportunities over the next five weeks for Johnny to impact the team and the season.

“In the near term, we felt we had to supplement that position. That’s why we brought in Neil Walker. That is a commentary of what we felt we needed to do to support this team over the last two months of the season. It’s not necessarily a commentary about how we feel about that situation going forward.”

This is how it goes when you’re building a team. Until a player gets a few years under his belt in the majors, there isn’t enough of a track record to know exactly what to expect. You make evaluations with the information you have at present, and Villar was trending in the right direction after the ’16 season.

If the Brewers did indeed make a mistake by offering Villar $23 million, he did them a favor by turning it down. Stearns isn’t ready to make that declaration just yet but also knows there would be risk in committing to Villar as the starting second baseman for 2018.

“There’s a chance for every player on a variety of different outcomes,” Stearns said. “We do need to be careful that we look at the totality of a player’s career throughout professional baseball before we jump to conclusions.

“We’ve seen instances over the past couple of years where people could have thought a player was not going to contribute, whether that was Keon Broxton at certain points last year or Orlando Arcia at certain points last year. Domingo Santana, at certain points last year. Those are healthy lessons for us.

“Now, at some point, we need to see consistent performance out of players or we need to go in a different direction. I think everyone would admit, including Johnny, that this has been a challenging year for him. We have seen flashes of the productive player we saw last year, but it hasn’t been consistent enough.

“I think he is disappointed by that but also is a pretty motivated player to get back to the level we saw last year.”

Which leaves the Brewers to intelligently guess on the chance of that happening.