Despite the fact that Guillen does hit his home runs, his extra-base hit totals were not exactly stellar until he knocked 40 doubles in 2008.
As a fan, it can be difficult to believe in the front offices of some organizations these days. Prior to the 2008 season, the Kansas City Royals handed Jose Guillen a three-year, $30 million contract. Guillen turned 32 on May 17, 2008 and posted an on-base percentage of .353 in 2007. Sounds fair enough to the average fan, right?
Wrong. Despite the apparently high OBP, Guillen’s lifetime statistics indicate, without a shadow of a doubt, that he is absolutely incapable of drawing even an average number of walks.
In 2003 – Jose Guillen’s career year by OPS+ standards – he drew 24 walks in 535 plate appearances. However, because of his high slugging percentage, he managed to put up a .391 wOBA. If a player is capable of a high OBP without drawing a lot of walks, is it a sign that he can hit for a high average to compensate, or is he just getting lucky?
When shown his career on-base of .323, it becomes apparent that in 2003, Jose Guillen was getting pretty damn lucky on a daily basis.
Guillen’s contributions in other seasons have been vastly overrated. If a player’s batting average in a given year deviates far from his career average, it is a telling sign that hits seem to be falling where they should not. Something as dependent on luck and circumstance as batting average is not repeatable at a high level year-to-year with the occasional exception (ex. Albert Pujols). To put it simply, if Guillen doesn’t have a lucky year, he’s more or less garbage.
Perhaps the most effective yet accessible statistic to evaluate offensive productivity is weighted runs created above average (wRAA) which is a more useful version of the weighted runs created formula (wRC). Guillen has posted positive wRAA values just three times in his career, which, sure enough, came during his age 27, 28, and 29 seasons (28.2, 16.1, 10.9 respectively).
Now, based on the incessant rumors linking Braves outfielder Jeff Francoeur (career OBP of .312) to the Royals last year, it has become pretty obvious to me that the Royals do not care much for players that know how to reach base. Having incapable players in your own system is one thing, but actively trying to acquire players who cannot get on base is even worse. Kansas City, a team that has made some questionable moves over the past few years, needs to stop going after the Jose Guillens and Francoeurs of the world if they are to turn themselves around. Signing below average corner outfielders who are past their prime years to multiyear, seven-figure salaried contracts is not the way to start. There’s more than a few reasons no team was willing to take Guillen off the Royals’ hands last summer.
- Joe
All statistics referenced in this post were taken directly from Fan Graphs (fangraphs.com) and Baseball Reference (baseball-reference.com). If you have any questions, comments or other insight that you wish to add, please comment. Thank you for reading and please check back often for new articles here at Incumbent GM.
