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| Losing Jacoby ~ Is this the Red Sox problem ? |
RED SOX : BASEBALL 2014
April 23,2014.
c/o Ben Shapiro
The Republican
Let's be real here. If the Boston Red Sox had Jacoby Ellsbury on their 2014 squad, they'd be a better baseball team right now. That's never really been up for debate.
Losing Ellsbury to the hated New York Yankees this past December wasn't about improving the 2014 Red Sox. It was about insuring that the Red Sox teams taking the field towards the end of this decade weren't doing so with an aging, past-his-prime outfielder earning over $20 million a year glued to their roster.
Had Ellsbury been looking for a four-year, or maybe even a five-year contract, then he very well could have been starting for the Red Sox Tuesday night, as opposed to the New York Yankees.
That's not what Ellsbury wanted though. He wanted a longer deal, and that's what the New York Yankees offered, so that's where he's going to be playing through the end of this decade.
Adding Ellsbury to the Yankees has made them a better team. That shouldn't surprise anyone. Removing him from the Red Sox roster has made them a less potent offensive team. Surprised? You shouldn't be. The odds are fairly high that everyone from Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington to manager John Farrell expected losing Ellsbury to hurt the 2014 squad.
Has Ellsbury been good? He sure has been. He's hitting .338, and he has stolen eight bases. The entire Red Sox team has eight stolen bases. The Red Sox's team on-base percentage is .325. Ellsbury is getting on-base at a .395 clip.
The Red Sox are 9-11 and in last place in the AL East. The Yankees are 11-8 and occupy first place in the division. Would things be different today if Ellsbury was in a Red Sox uniform? They probably would be. The Red Sox would be better, and the Yankees would most likely be a worse team.
Ellsbury hasn't been the only player on the Yankees to bat leadoff. But if he had stayed in Boston, then he'd have been the 2014 Red Sox everyday leadoff batter.
How have the 2014 Red Sox replacements fared? Not well. Twenty games into the 2014 season, the Red Sox have used six different players in the leadoff role. They're hitting a combined .190 with two stolen bases and an on-base percentage of .281.
Clearly, losing Ellsbury has had a negative impact on the Red Sox.
The numbers do look bad, but the reality is that it is April 22. The 2014 season is three weeks old.
The 2014 Yankees, bolstered by Ellsbury's production have managed to score one less run than the 2014 Red Sox.
Yea, that's right. The Red Sox, despite of a .238 team batting average, have scored one more run than the Yankees, who sport a team batting average of .265. The two teams are separated by less than three games in the standings and less than two runs in total offensive production. Are the Yankees a better offensive team than the Red Sox? Right now they are, but not by all that much, and it isn't even May yet.
Plus, the man who was targeted to be Ellsbury's top-of-the-batting-order-replacement, Shane Victorino has yet to play in a regular season game.
Would a healthy Victorino be as good as a healthy Ellsbury? Probably not, but he'd probably be a lot better than the cast of on-the-fly leadoff men who the Red Sox have trotted out since opening day 2014.
Losing a player such as Ellsbury can't be looked at in the vacuum of one or even two seasons. That seven-year deal will encompass a total of approximately 364 weeks in pinstripes. After three weeks, it looks as if the Red Sox miss Ellsbury. No one who had a role in deciding whether or not to make Ellsbury an offer that might have convinced him to stay in Boston could have been all that interested in assessing the wisdom of that choice in late April of 2014.
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