Villalobos Is Back in the Swing of Things

By STEVE HENSON

April 29, 1998 12 AM PT

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JetHawk fans were disappointed when hot-hitting third baseman Carlos Villalobos was traded last July to the Detroit Tigers.

Villalobos, a native of Colombia, was batting .341 with 11 home runs and 53 runs batted in at the time. He slumped with his new team, batting only .252 with one home run at Class-A Lakeland.

He has rediscovered his stroke this season at double-A Jacksonville with teammates Gabe Kapler (Taft High, Moorpark College) and Robert Fick (Newbury Park High, Ventura College, Cal State Northridge).

Villalobos is among Southern League leaders with a .438 batting average.

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Steve Henson

Steve Henson is a breaking news and enterprise reporter at the Los Angeles Times. He previously served as an editor and reporter in the Sports department. Henson was a leader in digital-only newsrooms from 2007-19 as a senior editor and columnist at Yahoo Sports and as senior editor at the USA Today Sports Media Group. This is his second stint at The Times, having covered the Dodgers and UCLA as well as doing enterprise, investigative and features writing from 1985-2007. Henson was awarded first place in sports features in 2023 and in 2021 by the L.A. Press Club. He has been honored several times by APSE — most recently in 2023 and 2021 — and also by the California News Publishers Assn., the Football Writers Assn. of America and U.S. Basketball Writers Assn.

Villalobos Is Back in the Swing of Things

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