Jacoby Ellsbury to the Yankees

So, Ellsbury is going to the Yankees.

And I'm more-or-less indifferent.

I never had any expectation that he'd be back, and the Yankees were always the most likely candidates to overpay him. It makes the Yankees better and the Red Sox worse, at least for the next couple of years, but that's life.

There are a couple of things that I'm not interested in seeing, both of which are visible in headlines at the Globe's site this morning.

"Deal proves Ellsbury a mercenary" - The number of people in this world who would be doing their jobs without financial compensation is not big. At some level, we're all "mercenaries." And it's not like he opted out of a deal for this - he played out his contract, the Red Sox got everything from him they had any right to expect, and now he's got the right to choose the best contract and the best situation for himself. I don't resent him making that choice. The Yankees probably guaranteed him something on the order of 30% more than anyone else would have. There's no way that the Red Sox were going to give him seven years, or that kind of annual value on any contract over three years, so it's a very rational decision for him to make, and it's silly to resent it, and offensive to portray it as some kind of character flaw.

"Ellsbury's departure good news for Sox fans" - That, of course, is obviously hogwash. Ellsbury has been, when healthy, a good-to-great player for the Red Sox, and this transaction makes the Red Sox weaker and the Yankees stronger. That's not even debatable. There's just no level on which this qualifies as "good news" and it's preposterous to suggest it. Now, does that mean that the 2014 Yankees will be better than the 2014 Red Sox? No, though that wouldn't be shocking. There's a lot to be done, still, and we don't know what Jackie Bradley's going to be, or where Carlos Beltran ends up (almost certainly not New York, now) or whether Jacoby is going to collide with Soriano in game 1 and miss half of the year. And, of course, the contract, even if he gets hurt in spring training and never plays a single game for the Yankees, doesn't hamstring the Yankees the way that it would hamstring anyone else - they have no practical limit to their ability to overpay players, so even if he isn't worth what he's getting paid in the last three of years of the deal, as is likely, it doesn't really matter to the Yankees, so that's not really good for Boston, either. No, there just isn't any "good news" here. That's life. C'est la vie...

In any event, the major source of my equanimity, I'm quite certain, is this - the Boston Red Sox have won three of the last ten World Series Championships, including the last one. That was true yesterday, when Jacoby Ellsbury was a free agent, and it's true today, now that he's a Yankee. I can live with that...

It's a poor craftsman who blames his tools...

Dennis Eckersley, during the NESN broadcast tonight, (including a quote Jacoby Ellsbury said earlier in the day), in reference to Ellsbury's OBP and the paucity of walks that he's drawn:

"Well, how do you expect me to walk? They're not trying to walk me - they don't want to walk me, because I'm fast. They don't want me to get on base." So that's why he's had a hard time with his On-Base Percentage.

In 2004, Barry Bonds became the all-time career leader in walks. Anyone know whose record he broke? Who has drawn more walks than anyone in the history of the game other than Barry Bonds?

Rickey Henderson.

Henderson could run a little, too...


You can't fix something if you don't recognize it as a problem.

Boston 7, Los Angeles of Anaheim 6

Some days you're the windshield, some days you're the bug. Last night, the Red Sox took the field having won five straight, but playing on the 15th consecutive day, with a clubhouse that's been fighting the flu, without their starting third baseman (on the DL), starting catcher (fighting the flu) and, just before game time, scratching their ace with a stiff neck. And when the Angels took a 5-1 lead in the fourth, it really seemed like it was not going to be Boston's night.

Final score: 7-6, Red Sox. This team has had a great stretch. And that game had several interesting storylines.

Jacoby Ellsbury:

Ellsbury led off the game with a HR. In the sixth inning, he hit another, to give the Red Sox a 6-5 lead. In the eighth, with the game tied, he led off with a beautiful drag bunt past the pitcher's mound toward the second baseman, and then scored from first on Dustin Pedroia's double. (Some players don't score from first on that ball, as the corner is short and the ball took a good hop back to Anderson. Some players score on a close play. Ellsbury scored without a throw.)

I don't think he can sustain it at this level, but as a Major Leaguer (64 games, 53 regular season, 11 post-season) Jacoby Ellsbury is now hitting .342/.417/.518/.935 with 19 steals in 19 tries and 6 HR in 193 at-bats (approximately 223 plate appearances). If he sustained that for a 700 plate appearance season, he'd finish with 207 hits, 38 2B and 19 HR. He'd score 148 runs and steal 60 bases.

As I said, I don't think that he's as good as he's played so far (that's not an insult - there are fewer than 30 players in Major League history who were as good as he's been so far), but he's been more than very good in his Major League career. If he were actually to sustain that for the entire season, he's a runaway winner of the Rookie of the Year award, and a real legitimate MVP contender.

Julian Tavarez:

Tavarez was the goat in the last loss, as he couldn't stem the tide after the Red Sox came back from a big deficit in New York against the Yankees. Last night, he entered the game with 1 out and 1 on in the 5th, with the team already facing a 5-2 deficit, and held the line through the sixth. He was bailed out on the other end by Okajima, but he prevented the Angels from scoring and finished the "starter innings" without things getting worse.

Hidecki Okajima:

Came in with two on and no one out in the 7th, facing the heart of the Angels lineup, and retired Guerrero, Anderson and Hunter without allowing a run. He did allow a pop-fly HR to tie the game in the 8th, but his performance in the 7th was critical, and he did a better job on the night than his ERA for the game (5.4) would indicate.

Kevin Youkilis:

With the team looking to scratch out runs against Weaver, David Ortiz singled in Dustin Pedroia, who had doubled, in the fifth, making the score 5-3. Manny Ramirez hit a high fly ball past the Pesky pole that sliced towards the stands, but didn't slice quite far enough, and Guerrero caught it at the wall. Five pitches later, Youkilis drove the ball into the monster seats to tie the game.

Dustin Pedroia:

His double in the fifth set up the rally which overcame the big early deficit. His double in the eighth drove in the winning run. He's now hitting .364/.418/.523/.941 for the season.

Jonathan Papelbon:

Three up, three down, two strikeouts in the ninth, as he continues to dominate.




There are a lot of nights during the baseball season where the story crystallizes early, and the game is, or feels, essentially over after the third inning. And most of the time, if it feels over early, it ends up over early. Last night was one of the times when what feels over early isn't actually over yet...