The Milwaukee Brewers have acquired shortstop Jonathan Villar from the Houston Astros in exchange for minor league right-hander Cy Sneed.
Villar, 24, had a solid season in a part-time role with the Astros, batting .284/.339/.414 in 128 plate appearances with 17 runs scored and seven stolen bases. He could give the Brew Crew a potential leadoff hitter with plus-plus speed if he wins a starting job on the Opening Day roster. Which brings us to incumbent shortstop Jean Segura.
There’s a strong possibility that this deal opens things up for the Brewers to trade Segura, who they’ve unsuccessfully tried to move a few times going back to last offseason. And Tom Haudricourt of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel seems to think that’s exactly what the team will do.
We’ve looked at Segura in the past as far as being a fit for the Mets, but it’s been a while so let’s take a fresh look at him.
Segura, 25, regressed from his average four-year metrics, batting .257 with an unimpressive .288 on-base percentage and a .336 slugging in 584 plate appearances. Only 16 doubles, six homers and 13 walks. (yikes!)
His .616 OPS was nearly 50 points lower than his his career .662 mark which wasn’t all that great to begin with. His 62 wRC+ was a career low and quite frankly very Tejada-esque. His fWAR was zero.
Much like Eric Young Jr., Segura has excellent speed as his 25 stolen bases will attest, but as the saying goes you can’t steal first base.
Now all of that might be somewhat tolerable if Segura gave you plus-defense up the middle, but the fact of the matter is that he comes in at below average defensively at shortstop.
With -3 defensive runs saved and a career -9.1 UZR, there’s nothing here to get excited about, and his penchant for throwing errors is now legendary.
So much like my last assessment of Segura, I’m left asking myself, what exactly does he give us that we don’t comparatively have already? I would much rather go with Wilmer Flores and Matt Reynolds at this point. In fact, I’m excited at the prospect of what the two of them can deliver next season.
On a side note, we had record traffic today, odd for a very non-Mets news day. I just want to welcome any new readers and also thank all of you for your support. Let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see more of on MMO and Let’s Go Mets.
