Right Idea, Wrong Player

Since Dayton Moore has taken over as the Royals GM, he’s taken a lot of flak from the sabermetric community for acquiring guys who make a lot of outs. He built an offense around tools players who don’t get on base, ranging from the likes of Jose Guillen to Mike Jacobs and Yuniesky Betancourt. He talked about the importance of OBP, but when push came to shove, the evidence that he valued players who could get on base just wasn’t there.

So, now, there are rumors that the Royals are considering shipping Alberto Callaspo to the Dodgers in exchange for AJ Ellis, a 28-year-old minor league catcher whose biggest selling point is his on base percentage. The last two years in Triple-A, he’s posted OBPs of .436 and .438, racking up more walks than strikeouts. His career OBP in the minors is .398. For once, the Royals appear to be pursuing a player whose best skill is controlling the strike zone.

Unfortunately for Royals fans, even when Moore pursues a high OBP guy, he still finds one with a fatal flaw. With Ellis, that would be a complete lack of power. His ISO in the minors is an unimpressive .097, and that’s despite playing in hitting environments that are very conducive to offense. Over the last two seasons, he’s managed just 40 extra base hits, or 22 percent of his total hits. He’s a slap hitter without the ability to make the pitcher pay for making a mistake.

Guys who run up high OBPs in the minors without much in the way of power generally just don’t do well in the big leagues. It’s one thing to work the count against minor league pitchers who lack the command the pound the zone with good stuff, and another to try that same tactic in the big leagues. Without the ability to make the pitcher afraid to leave one over the heart of the plate, the ability to draw walks is severely limited.

This is why minor league walk rates actually don’t correlate all that well with major league walk rates. There are some guys who have the ability to make this work (Chone Figgins, Luis Castillo), but those guys can run. You just don’t find slow, no power guys in the big leagues who maintain a high on base percentage.

This doesn’t mean Ellis is worthless. He’s got a decent defensive reputation and can make contact, and as a catcher, the bar for offense in the majors is pretty low. He could probably be a useful backup catcher and maybe even a not horrible starter for a couple of years.

But, if Moore really wants to get KC’s OBP as a team up, he needs to acquire some good hitters, and AJ Ellis is not a good hitter. It should be refreshing to Royals fans that Moore is interested in a guy who gets on base, but it shouldn’t be an OBP or power trade-off – the goal is to get guys who can do both.