After JUCO detour, Indiana's Matthew Ellis leading Big Ten in homers

Power, for Matthew Ellis, generally comes easy.

At 6-4, 240 pounds with a sturdy base and hulking forearms and hands, the left-handed hitting Indiana catcher doesn't have to exert himself much to generate thunder in his bat. He just has to guess right and connect, as he did Tuesday night at Victory Field in Indianapolis against Butler.

IU baseball: Jeff Mercer and his band of misfits face a season of transition

IU vs Butler: Indiana drops Butler 9-1 with 'effectively wild' pitching performance

He was expecting sliders from Bulldogs left-hander Cole McDaniel, so when he got one on the inner half of the plate in a 1-2 count in the first inning, he put an easy, compact but potent swing on it and sent it over the fence. It traveled over the 364-foot mark in right center field, over the grassy hillside that serves as outfield general admission seating and on to the concourse walkway under the scoreboard.

With that 400-plus foot wallop, Ellis took back his place atop the Big Ten home run leaderboard with his 13th home run on the season. He's also fifth in the conference with 45 RBIs. He's hitting .286 with a .413 on-base percentage and team-best slugging percentage of .571 that puts him tops on the team in the combined category of OPS at .984.

He's been a bright spot for an Indiana team that has struggled, entering its weekend home series against Illinois with an 18-23 record and a 4-8 Big Ten mark, sitting 10th in the 13-team league. If the season ended now, the Hoosiers would not get a spot in the eight-team conference tournament in Omaha.

More: Indiana's Micah McFadden hoping NFL teams see value in his toughness and mind

More: IU's last top-5 class in 2013 wasn't a bust, but it wasn't a success either

Getting better at each stop

But even though Ellis makes power hitting seem easy, the story of how he got to Indiana and succeeded is one of perseverance. Indiana is, after all, his third college in four years.

Powerful as he always was, Ellis had to make himself a much better catcher and refine his hitting approach to get to this point. In so doing, he's become a shining example for younger players on the IU roster as coach Jeff Mercer tries to rebuild.

"He's an incredibly talented player," Mercer said. "But he has been a catalyst in the offensive room as far as his work ethic, his drill work, his investment, his approaches. It's a super young group, but when you have an anchor like him that comes in with that attitude and that leadership, that's been his most impressive and impactful aspect."

Early lessons guide Ellis

Ellis always had that focus, drive and attention to detail, at least as long as he knew Devin Hicks. Hicks was Ellis' head coach at Shelby County High School in Shelbyville, Ky., but he started working with him at the age of 12.

IU women: Big addition: Road lead to Indiana women's basketball for Providence transfer Alyssa Geary

IU men's soccer: Indiana, Notre Dame men's soccer teams face off, wrap up spring exhibition schedule

At a younger age than most, Ellis had an appreciation of the value of extra work outside of practice, of spending time hitting against pitching machines and off of tees and doing everything to make sure every part of his swing was what he wanted it to be.

"He's always been a workaholic," Hicks said. "He would get up with me, his junior and senior year I remember him getting up and coming to the fieldhouse at Shelby County at 6, 6:30 a.m., before school started, working out with me, picking my brain on everything hitting, catching, everything baseball. I knew he was going to be special."

It became even more clear as he grew. In middle school, Ellis had to get new shoes every 2-3 months, so Hicks knew he was going to be massive then. He also took to the weight room quickly, and even bought into the dietary suggestions brought to him by the coaching staff.

Hicks was also impressed with his understanding of the importance of film study, and of knowing how a pitcher wanted to approach him.

"He would send me video of guys we were facing," Hicks said. "He would just pick my brain in the weight room about pitches and tendencies in high school. His pre-game stuff is off-the-charts. It's very, very impressive when a high school sophomore comes up to you and asks you, what's a guy's out pitch? What's his set-up pitch? That's really impressive."

IU football: IU football's potential breakout players on defense include impact transfers, freshmen

Transfer portal update: It's crowded. With a deadline looming, a look at where Indiana natives have transferred

Talent evident in high school

The combination of size, talent and worth ethic made Ellis a special high school player. He hit .461 with eight home runs as a senior, earning all-state honors from the Kentucky Baseball Coaches' Association, and he led Shelby County to a pair of district titles.

He was also a Top 10 prospect in the state and drew interest from Louisville and Mississippi State, but he ultimately found himself deciding between Tennessee, which had a first-year coach in Tony Vitello his senior year, and junior college powerhouse Walters State in Morristown, Tenn.

He ultimately couldn't pass up the opportunity to play in the SEC, college baseball's most powerful conference.

First stop at Tennessee

He found that his path to playing time wasn't at all clear. The Vols had a veteran catcher in Landon Gray, and Ellis' classmate Connor Pavolony was simply more advanced as a receiver behind the plate. Though Ellis had more power, Pavolony's defensive skill got him on the field as a true freshman while Ellis took a redshirt.

After a conversation with Vitello, he realized his defense was too far behind for him to ever make a push to unseat Pavolony, and to get better, he needed to go somewhere he could play every day.

"It just wasn't the right place at the right time for me," Ellis said. "A lot of it was me. I wasn't really prepared defensively to play down there yet. Offensively, I always knew i could do it. It was just catching up on the defense. I really wasn't the best receiver. I put my body in bad positions. I had bad footwork when it came to throwing. My blocking wasn't where I needed it to be."

Embracing improvement at Walters State

He decided re-connecting with Walters State was the best bet for a number of reasons. The most important being that there aren't as many rules governing junior college practice time as there are at the Division I level and he could catch every day, even in the traditional offseason in intrasquad scrimmages.

Walters State coach Dave Shelton gladly took him and put him behind the plate. He was forced to become a better catcher simply because of the sort of pitcher he had to handle.

Shelton said Ellis was at the baseball facility every day doing something to improve as a receiver or as a hitter, and that the games in particular pushed him to improve.

"I know Tennessee had toyed with the idea of moving him to first base, which I felt would kill his pro value," Shelton said. "I thought he had the tools to be a catcher. He just needed to work on it. I think junior college was a tremendous fit for Matthew. There's probably no better place to get better as a receiver than in junior college, because we have guys who throw 93, 94, 95 miles an hour and they don't always know where it's going. You're back there as a catcher having to learn to react."

Hitting gets an upgrade

Ellis made big strides behind the plate while also pounding the ball as a hitter. He hit four home runs in 22 games in the COVID-shortened 2020 season, then posted a gaudy slash line of .348/.487/.676 in 2021 with 17 home runs and 62 RBIs in 2021. He showed patience as well as power, drawing 49 walks against 39 strikeouts.

"He's so big and strong, but he's also very disciplined at the plate," Shelton said. "When he got here, he probably had too much discipline. I had to kind of get him to turn it loose a little bit. I told him,' I don't need someone who runs a 7.6 in the 60 trying to walk and clog the bases. I need you to hit the ball in the parking lot.'"

Indiana comes calling

Ellis hit the ball in the parking lot enough to be a draw for a Division I program. An Indiana assistant asked Shelton if he had a catcher available. Walters State was in the middle of an intrasquad game, but he stopped it just so he could shoot video of Ellis catching pitches and throwing to bases. That was enough to draw an Indiana scholarship offer, and Ellis was thrilled to take it, picking the Hoosiers over Kentucky and Texas A&M.

"Coach Shelton gave me the best advice and told me, 'Go somewhere that you're going to be wanted,'" Ellis said. "I connected with coach Mercer instantly. We grew a relationship from the first time he called me."

Coming back to Division I

Returning to Division I has been an adjustment on offense and defense. He's still trying to handle a wild staff. The Hoosiers have the worst team ERA in the Big Ten (6.93) in large part because they have walked 237 batters, 47 more than any other team in the league.

They also have league highs in both hit batsmen (80) and wild pitches (54). But Ellis is much better at handling that even than he would have been a year ago, blocking more pitches in the dirt and generally keeping the ball in front of him. He has six passed balls.

And at the plate he's had to learn how to deal with failure and move on from it, knowing how likely it is against Division I pitchers. In mid-March he went 0-for-5 in a loss to Troy, but followed that up by going 3-for-4 with two home runs against Kentucky. Prior to the home run against Butler, he'd gone 23 days without a homer and had just two hits in his previous 13 at bats, but he had three hits against the Bulldogs.

"It's just getting the right pitches," Ellis said. "Doing what I do and hitting them hard."

There's a good chance Ellis will be taken in July's Major League Baseball draft, which means there's a possibility this will be his only season at Indiana. But if this is it, he's making it a memorable one, and a performance that Mercer thinks will impact the players who are around next year and beyond.

"He is one of my all-time favorite players," Mercer said. "His legacy will be here forever. Whatever he does professionally or not in the future, he has a massive legacy on this program."

Follow Herald-Times IU Insider Dustin Dopirak on Twitter at @DustinDopirak or email him at DDopirak@gannett.com.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Indiana's Matthew Ellis is the Big Ten's home run leader