Eddie Villegas was hired as an assistant coach for Kingsmen baseball in June of 2018. He will primarily serve as the catching coach and third base coach. Villegas also plays a role with recruiting and hitting for the program.
Before joining Cal Lutheran, Villegas began his coaching career at The Hit Factory, youth development/travel ball program for ages 8-14, in Newbury Park.
Before his coaching career began, Villegas was a California Lutheran University graduate in 2017 with a degree in psychology while competing for two seasons for the Kingsmen (2016 & 2017) where he was a part of two SCIAC Regular Season Championships, two SCIAC Postseason Tournament Championships, 1 West Regional Championship and 1 World Series Championship (the first in program history). Villegas was also a Second Team All-Conference Selection in 2016 where he posted a .355 batting average, and .983 Fielding Percentage, and only allowed four passed balls in 36 games behind home plate while successfully throwing out 30% of would-be base runners while appearing in 36 games behind the plate for the purple and gold.
While at Cal Lutheran, Villegas has coached the Kingsmen catchers to post a 25% or better of runners caught stealing percentage, 25% in 2019, 33% in 2020(33%), 46% in 2022, 31% in 2023. His catchers have included the likes of Jalen Parks (2019-2023) who posted a career batting average of .267, 15 career home runs and successfully throwing out 35% of would-be base runners. Another familiar backstop under Coach Villegas is Brendan Durfee, Two Time Second Team All-Conference Catcher (2022 & 2023), Two Time SCIAC Tournament MVP (2022 & 2023) and Region 10 All Defensive Team (2023).
In the Summer of 2022, Villegas was hired as an assistant coach for the Canyon County Spuds Collegiate Summer Baseball team (Caldwell, Idaho) in the Independence League. He helped lead the Spuds to their first winning record, 28-26 (second-place divisional finish), in franchise history. In his only season with the Spuds, he coached stellar performances by Independence League MVP Tyler Stone (University of Nebraska) who finished as the League Leader in Home Runs (11) and Runs Batted In (64), and also coached Clay Rickerman (California Lutheran) who finished the summer as the Earned Run Average Champion (2.72). Other individual(s) accomplishments included 5 of the top 15 finishers for batting average and three pitchers finishing in the top five in Earned Run Average while also having a Team Earned Run Average of 3.95 which was the best in the Independence League
A native of Compton, California, Villegas graduated from St John Bosco (Bellflower, Ca) in 2012 where he lettered in Baseball. After high school he began his college career at Los Angeles Harbor College (2013-2015).
Villegas resides in Thousand Oaks, CA.
