There have been plenty of fast starts in Major League History. Some of those fast starts were just a glimpse of what the young, gifted player would be. Players like Willie Mays, Rod Carew, Johnny Bench, Carlton Fisk and Frank Robinson started off their careers by winning the Jackie Robinson Award and finished it among the immortals of the Baseball Hall of Fame. On a smaller sample size, fans look forward to the expanded rosters of September when they get to finally see the future players whom their organization believes deserve a look at the major league level. The luxury of expanded rosters affords teams the option to see what kind of fruit their cupboards have bore.
A perfect example is Toronto Blue Jays catcher JP Arencibia, who was the 2010 Pacific Coast League Most Valuable Player with the Jays triple A affiliate in Las Vegas. Arencibia’s season got him to Toronto for September and his first day in the Big Leagues was the stuff that Legends are made of. After being added to the lineup in the nine spot, he managed to launch two home runs, including his first in his first career at bat. He then picked up two more hits to go four for five on the day. The rest of September was a struggle as Arencibia finished the eleven game tryout with a batting line of .143/.189/.343 in 35 at bats. This is not a statement on Arencibia, but simply the love affair with the September call up. He will get a chance with the Jays this year and by all accounts will either sink or swim on his own talents, but to hear Jays fans talk, they are blinded by the results of that first magical night. How much goodwill does the small sample size of a wild ride in September get a player? Imagine if Arencibia’s September turned into an October run for the rookie, what then? How much time does that buy him, a year or two? How about three or four? This year should be an interesting season for a talented player who still seems to be living off the shine of a fall to remember.
In 2007, Jacoby Ellsbury burst onto the scene and gave the Red Sox a weapon the likes of which this generation of Red Sox fans had never seen. His blazing speed and strong arm gave the playoff bound Sox their best defensive outfielder in recent memory. Late in the season, Manny Ramirez and his left field circus act would be removed in the closing innings of games to add Ellsbury. This gave Red Sox fans a reason to stop holding their breath each time a ball went to left. On top of the number of lives Ellsbury saved from heart-related trips to the local emergency room from Presque Isle to New Haven and from Provincetown to Pittsfield with his glove, he warmed just as many with bat, his ability to swipe bags and, dare I say, his boyish good looks. He went on to steal 9 bags in 9 attempts, while providing a slash line of .353/.394/.509 in his 116 at bat audition. More importantly, as September rolled into October and spring became fall in New England, the air got a chill, the leaves changed colors, and on the green grass of Fenway, it is this time of year, where a single performance can elevate you to legendary status in Red Sox Nation.
In the 2007 divisional series, Ellsbury appeared in only 2 games; he managed only one at bat and scored only one run as a pitch runner. The following round in a series where the Red Sox trailed three games to one to the Cleveland Indians, the series that should have been remembered for the comeback became almost as famous on Yawkey Way for Manny Ramirez’s infamous conversation with a reporter after game 4. It was the conversation where he told Red Sox fans the unthinkable: that baseball is only a game, and if they lose it’s not that big a deal.
Ellsbury was more active, getting into 5 games and contributing two hits, three runs, and a stolen base in his eight at bats. Ellsbury’s extended September call up exploded in the Red Sox four game set with the Colorado Rockies. In those four games, Ellsbury managed sixteen at-bats and put up a line of .438/.500/.688, Of his seven hits, four were doubles, and he swiped another base in this series. By the time the duck boats were rolling their way to Fenway, the bright Red number 46 was emblazoned across the city.
That was four years ago. Now we stand on the entrance to the 2011 season and Jacoby Ellsbury is going to be asked to set the table for what could and should be a historically good Red Sox offense. There is no doubt that, in some combination, Pedroia, Youkilis, Gonzalez, Ortiz, Crawford, and Drew should produce runs at an astonishing rate. Ellsbury, for all his virtues, will be asked to do one thing really well when Fenway opens its doors for its 99th season: get on base. Unfortunately to this point it is one thing he has not excelled at.
Does Ellsbury have the skills to be a leadoff hitter?
Discounting a severely disappointing 2010 when injuries limited Ellsbury to 18 games, he has excelled in a lot of the glamor stats, but the truth is that the one stat Ellsbury has not dominated in is runs scored. In his first two full seasons in the major leagues Ellsbury managed to score 192 runs, which does rank him 22nd in runs scored during that period. The problem is that it also put him 40 runs behind teammate Dustin Pedroia. During that time, Ellsbury batted .291 and swiped a combined 120 bases. He also managed 343 hits, 83 for extra bases (including 17 triples), and 477 total bases. For all that production the question is why has none of this translated into more runs scored for Ellsbury. The Red Sox scored 1,717 runs over two seasons with Ellsbury in the leadoff spot. Unfortunately, he might have been the reason they haven’t scored more.
For all this virtues—and there are many—Jacoby Ellsbury carries a .344 OBP over his four year career in the Fens. As a leadoff hitter, he has shown little development on the plate discipline front. The number of pitches that Ellsbury swings at overall, and the number of pitches he swings at outside the zone remain virtually unchanged year to year. That being said, Ellsbury has an unusually high contact rate both in and outside the zone, both numbers reside at approximately 7% above the league averages. Unfortunately, it seems to have affected his ability to lay off pitchers outside the zone. This unusually low number of swinging strikes, which from 2007 to 2010 averaged 4% below the league average, which hovered around 8.6%, means that although Ellsbury doesn’t miss, he also swings at 5% less of the pitches he sees compared to the average major leaguer.
For all of the issues that Ellsbury presents from an on base perspective, he is still an above average player in that respect, but just barely. He is .01 above the Major League average which has leveled off around .333 since 2000. The truth of the matter is that Marco Scutaro has batted .280/.357/.403 out of the leadoff spot in his career and in the past two seasons while playing 294 games and batting primarily in the leadoff spot—one of them with Toronto—the veteran shortstop managed to generate 192 runs scored. In those two seasons Scutaro’s OPS+ was 100, or exactly league average. In his two full seasons in the Bigs, Ellsbury, for all this flash, posted an OPS+ of 93. The truth of the matter is that Jacoby Ellsbury is not a great leadoff hitter, and in fact might be one of the weak spots in the Red Sox lineup this season. Of course, weak is a relative term for this star-studded line up.
On the other hand, in a combined 126 plate appearance in the eighth and ninth spot in the Red Sox order, Ellsbury is a .391/.440/.591 hitter. Maybe the argument will be made for sample size, and others will argue regression to the mean, or Ellsbury’s youth and development as he is going into the magical 28th year, a season that seems to produce more break out performances than any other. The pressure will be on the speedster to produce as the lineup behind him is as potent, if not more so, than any other in baseball. From what we have seen so far, that might be too much to expect from Ellsbury.
People see great speed in a player and want to draw comparisons to other leadoff men from years past. Unfortunately for Ellsbury it isn’t realistic to stack him up against players like Tim Raines and Kenny Lofton who both had careers that might some day land them in Cooperstown. Both of these players posted OBP’s in the .370-.380 range for their career. Their OPS+ average was 119 for Lofton and 134 for Raines leading up to the season both turned 28.
If Jacoby Ellsbury is going to take the Red Sox leadoff spot to this level, he is certainly going to have to find a new gear in his game when it comes to runs scored. For now Red Sox Nation will fawn over having the young Oregon native back in the lineup, but when will the shine of 2007 fade and Ellsbury is relegated to another spot in the lineup that better fits with his production? Will he fulfill the promise of that September call up, that magical October ,or will Jacoby Ellsbury be just another average Major Leaguer on a really good team?
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Original Story:
http://fullcountpitch.com/2011/03/04/...
