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    Reds acquire Mike Villani from the Dodgers in Alexis Diaz trade

    Doug Gray 16

    The Cincinnati Reds have acquired minor league pitcher Mike Villani from the Los Angeles Dodgers in a trade that sent former All-Star closer Alexis Diaz to the defending World Series Champions.

    The Dodgers selected Mike Villani last summer in the 13th round of the draft. He was coming off of a solid season in the bullpen for Long Beach State where he had a 3.24 ERA and 10 saves in 22 outings. Over the course of his 25.0 innings he had allowed 17 hits, walked 11 batters, and struck out 29. Following the college season he made a brief appearance in the Cope Cod League where he threw 4.2 innings with no walks and six strikeouts for Cotuit.

    After the draft last year Villani did not pitch in the regular season. When 2025 began the right-handed reliever was on the injured list and missed the first six weeks of the season. Last week he was sent on a rehab assignment to pitch for the Arizona Complex League Dodgers. Villani has pitched in two games on that assignment and thrown a perfect inning in each outing and struck out five of the six hitters that he’s faced.

    Last year at Long Beach State, Mike Villani has his fastball up to 98 MPH, but sat more so in the mid-90’s with the pitch according to Baseball America. Prior to his junior season at Long Beach State, Villani pitched one year at Palomar College and then one year (but just 1.1 innings) for Santa Clara.

    You can see the career stats for Mike Villani here.

    Alexis Diaz is now heading to Triple-A with the Dodgers. The 2025 season has been a bit of a disaster for the former All-Star. He began the year on the injured list and then performed poorly while on rehab with Louisville. Cincinnati called him up despite that and he then struggled with the Reds for two weeks before they made the decision to send him to the minor leagues to try and figure things out.

    The option to Louisville did not seem to help him figure much out as he allowed eight hits in 8.2 innings while walking eight batters and hitting two more. His WHIP with Louisville during May was 1.85 and he struck out just eight of the 44 hitters he faced (18.2% strikeout rate). It’s tough to say what exactly he needs to do in order to get back to his old self, but whatever it is it’s going to need to involve walking far fewer hitters and striking out quite a bit more than he has been doing this season.

    Doug Gray
    Doug Gray is the owner and operator of this website and has been running it since 2006 in one variation or another.

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    16 Responses

      1. He pitched at Palomar College. Baseball Reference doesn’t have stats for his season but he was on the mound for the full season.

    3. Seems like his fastball has a good amount of life on it from the draft video I saw on Dodgers Twitter. What do we know about a secondary pitch?

    4. I’m a bit surprised. That kind of a move is a we give up type trade.

      Uncoachable or unfixable?

      1. Diaz’s stuff is no longer mlb caliber. Sending him to another organization who wants to take a shot at fixing him and getting a (small) bit of value in return. Just makes sense.

      3. @MBS, this took me by surprise, too. I realized that Diaz had declined. I had no idea how much his value cratered.

        1. That’s because that team paid Joey Votto $25 million to hit .205 & slug .370, and $16 million to Mike Moustakas to hit .213 & slug .345.

    6. Well, it was a couple years later than I was hoping they’d trade him (when all indications were he was beginning to regress, and he was at his maximum trade value).

      But, at this point, after holding onto Diaz for too long, dumping his salary for anything at all is a win.

    7. Villani needs to make solid progress and even then, may never rise to the ML level or maybe not even AAA. So, it’s hard to see this as anything other than a salary dump. A salary dump is fine if it leads to a serious acquisition or trade. If it is simply pocketed as many in the past have been then this accomplishes nothing. Maybe it’s to free a 40-man slot for someone on the 60-day. Unlike the optimism on the RLN thread, I’ll be skeptical until I see a real move.

    8. If this keeps Diaz from ever seeing a mound for Cincy again, it’s a net positive, even if this other guy never makes the majors.

      Diaz, as of right now, is just not a major leaguer. And yes, this is why so many of us wanted to trade him in 2023 when his value was so high.

      Always be trading relievers when their value is high.

      1. That’s hard to disagree with. They don’t have anyone in that category right now.

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