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.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
Dave this is a little harsh. Moore just signed Wilson Betemit. Problems. Solved.
Doesn’t MLB already have one of these? Named Jason Kendall?
The 2010 version is actually Josh Thole.
What am I missing about Callaspo? He’s young, his minor league track record supports his offensive outout. His BABIP is not inflated, he has a good K:BB ratio.
60 extra base hits in 575 AB’s shows decent power. Still young enough to improve.
Is his fielding horrific?
It isn’t all sbermetrics with me. I watched all his games where Greinke pitched, so I saw him probaly in 100+ AB’s. I like his approach and swing.
Seems to me Moore should be looking elsewhere on his team to fill holes.
He’s got the “bad guy” reputation, for reasons that are probably valid.
he beat his wife, but so have a lot of guys. bobby cox. dave justice. brett myers. julio lugo. etc., etc., etc.
I sincerely hope that the “but so have a lot of guys” in the above comment is not an attempt to excuse someone from domestic violence. I realize this is a baseball blog, but domestic violence statistics are pretty sickening, and the fact that it’s more commonplace amongst sports stars doesn’t lessen that.
jason, i appreciate and agree with your concern. what i would like to point out is the perception that some receive in the aftermath of beating their wives. callapso is labeled a bad guy. the astros cut lugo outright when he knocked his wife around, but then the red sox signed him for a 4 year/$32 million contract. different organizational values? statute of limitations? who knows… these guys work and live in the public eye, which must be very difficult. that public relations and pressure requires that the astros cut lugo and the diamondbacks cut callapso. people revel in bobby cox’s accomplishments. i love the guy as a manager, but i can’t help but remember every time i see the guy that his wife had to call 9-1-1 on him because he was slapping her around. the reality is that ballplayers are people. they work in public. and they make mistakes. i can evaluate statistics, but i have trouble with reputation labels. obviously, nobody would question david justice’s clubhouse reputation, but he beat up halley berry of all people.
Actually, Richie, there was a bit of a gap between the Astros’ release of of Lugo and the Red Sox signing him. 😉
The Rays signed him a few days after his release from the Astros, and had him for about 3 years until they traded him to the Dodgers for Joel Guzman and Sergio Pedroza. After the 2006 season he became a free agent, then signed with the Red Sox.
So, yeah, there was probably a bit of “water under the bridge” mentaility by the time the Red Sox signed him.
These are the sorts of trade rumors I really hate. The Royals may be looking at Ellis. The Dodgers may be looking at Callaspo. Those two maybes do not equate an Ellis-for-Callaspo straight up deal…and, in fact, they would absolutely not equate to a straight up deal.
So let’s say they really are talking deal, though: Did it ever occur to anybody that the reason this has not occurred already is because the other names are still being hammered out? Please, let’s not judge a deal before it has happened.
This wasn’t a trade analysis. Callaspo was only mentioned once, in the context of the rumor. This was a post about Ellis, not about whether the Royals should make that proposed deal.
Dave- I’m with you. Your analysis was right on w/ Ellis.
I was just trying to figure out why Moore was down on Callaspo.
Last year Callaspo posted a wOBA just north of .350. That’s actually pretty darn good for a 26 year old 2B who plays solid defense (UZR was harsh on him last year, but liked him the season before). I think he has the makings of a 3-3.5 WAR player. The Jewish mother in me screams, “Dayton Moore, he’s a keeper!”.
Dave- I’d speak to your analysis on Ellis, but I really don’t know anything about him or how minor league numbers translate to the majors. Your points made sense though.
I wouldn’t mind a comparison point or two, however. I mean it sounds rational, guys without power see strikes in MLB, but I don’t know much about Major League Equivalency projections.
I think it’s important to remember that Figgins has made this work for one season. Prior to 2009, Figgins posted average to slightly above average walk rates in his ML career.
In the postseason, specifically in the ALCS, opposing teams got ahead of Figgins early in the count, forcing him to swing the bat to get on base. And for a guy with a career .097 ISO, I feel like that’s the blueprint on him going forward. I’m not saying he’s going to fall off a cliff, but I’d be shocked if he managed to post a 14% BB rate again.
How well does Ellis compare to Ryan Hanigan? Hanigan had some pretty good OBP numbers in the minors, he’s now 29, and has little power. There’s value in getting a player like Hanigan – probably not as a full-time starter but as a backup catcher you could do a lot worse.
A .360/.340 OBP catcher should be worth a few million on the open market.
Wade Boggs did pretty well for himself as a slow, low power, high OBP hitter… How about Pete Rose?
How about Dave Magadan, Mike Hargrove, Kevin Seitzer, Greg Gross, Bill Mueller, Hal Morris?
You can always recite the exceptions easily, but how many more people that fit the rule do you not remember?
Like when someone says Three True Outcome hitters regress earlier than balanced hitters, and you say “Well Jim Thome had a 123 OPS+ at 37 and a 118 at 38”, well, how many non-Jim Thome’s are there? How many more Danny Tartabull’s and Gene Tenace’s are there that were pretty much done as regulars in their early 30’s? Or maybe even earlier, to a point where they’re forgotten?
There will always be players who can make up for limits in areas through special talent in others, but because Bill Mueller made it despite a .104 career minor league ISO, and .102 if you take out rehab and short stints from 99 on), means they all should?
To be fair, though, how sure are we that they are really the exceptions to some rule? Has anyone actually looked at players who have high OBPs and low ISOs in the minors and determined they are significantly less likely to get on base well than other players, or is Dave just guessing that that is the case? If the former, it would be nice to actually present such information. If the latter, then that’s no better evidence that such a rule exists than listing a handful of exceptions is that it doesn’t.
Maybe it is true that such a trend exists and is meaningful, but if no one is going to bother to either check or report where it has been checked, I don’t think it’s fair to attack someone’s evidence against something when it is at least as much evidence as is presented for it.
Chris Dial did a bunch of work on this ~10 years ago, when the stathead community was in love with prospects like Jackie Rexrode, and then I did some similar research ~5 years ago at the old strikethree.com – I’m not even sure that stuff is still online. I just didn’t have time to run down Dial’s piece today. I figured you guys would prefer this to no post.
Kincaid, while I’m not sure if Dave is right on the top of my head, I can say that when you have about a dozen or so guys that you can list to “disprove” the theory, well, that’s not a great sample. Taking a walk isn’t a new-fangled skill, guys have made careers of it since the days of Max Bishop. Probably plenty of lower level guys who were able to make use of their limited skill sets by walking a lot in HS, College, maybe even the low minors, but after awhile, pitchers will have the skill to say “if I pitch strikes to this guy, he may hit a single, but if I don’t, he will walk”, and suddenly his patience is mitigated because he sees a lot of strikes. It’s why it’s ultra impressive when a guy like Chone Figgins or Luis Castillo can coax a walk so well, it shows a real special skill.
But when we can’t name any who washed out (outside of Rexrode like Dave said), it’s more likely that we just can’t remember who they are. We remember Bill Mueller because he panned out to be a pretty good baseball player.
And when you think about it, it’s a logical point. If you have a slow guy w/ no power at the dish who draws a lot of walks, are you doing a Dice-K corner nibble, or are you going after him?
Actually, Dave, when you get a chance, any idea what happened to Rexrode? He was doing well with a .408 OBP at 21 in AA, then he washed out. Seemed wicked sudden.
“You just don’t find slow, no power guys in the big leagues who maintain a high on base percentage. ”
What about Nick Johnson? He may just be living off of the marginal to average power of his heyday, because his power has disappeared since his wrist injury. Even in 2008, when his batting average sat at .220, his OBP was still over .400.
To those who are wondering why Dayton would trade Callaspo it’s his defense. I’m a Royals fan and saw him play defense everyday, I don’t care what the numbers say, he is utterly horrific in the field. The Royals already have a lot of guys who play terrible defense so trading the only one with actual trade value, I have no problem with.
Jackie Rexrode last played for the Newark Bears in 2002. There is reference to his having an altercation with a coach, but who, where and when are not noted. He was reported as possibly hanging drywall with his dad in 2006.