Red Sox Need Jacoby Ellsbury to Look Beyond Tough 2010 Season
After the incredible highs of his initial time in Boston to the awkward lows of 2010, the Red Sox are just hoping for a happy medium.
"We expect him to be healthy and be a significant part of the team," general manager Theo Epstein said of Ellsbury, who played in just 18 games this year due to lingering, and perhaps undiscovered, fractures in his ribs, initially the result of a collision with third baseman Adrian Beltre on April 11 in Kansas City.
Thus began one of the more tumultuous aspects of a tumultuous season in Boston filled with injuries up and down the roster.
Ellsbury rehabbed and returned in May, but lasted just three games before returning to the disabled list, soon thereafter calling out the team’s medical staff for missing a cracked rib on his backside. First baseman Kevin Youkilis lauded other injured players for staying with the team while they rehabbed, an apparent shot at Ellsbury's decision to fly to Arizona and spend several weeks at the Athletes' Performance Institute.
Fans and media members turned on Ellsbury, marking him a softie who was more loyal to his agent (Scott Boras) than his team. When he came back for another abbreviated stint in August, Ellsbury desperately tried to salvage something of what had become a lost season, one that ended after just nine more games when he tumbled onto his sore side in Texas, but there was little sense during that last go-around that Ellsbury would provide the difference down the stretch.
That mindset could be tied not only to the words of Youkilis and others who had written off Ellsbury for 2010, but also in the fact that the offense kept chugging along with the dynamic Ellsbury atop the lineup earlier in the year. Detractors and critics used that Ellsbury-less success as ammunition.
However, a closer look suggests that having the speedster at his best could've made a solid offense into a historic attack. In large part due to the eventual loss of Youkilis and Dustin Pedroia, Boston was rather ordinary offensively after the All-Star break, ranking seventh in the American League in runs scored and eighth in batting. But that slump actually began to take hold before the ultimate departures of the stars, and the lack of an Ellsbury type became evident with each passing day.
No knock on Marco Scutaro, who performed well in the leadoff role, but the Sox' No. 1 hitters ranked seventh in the AL in hitting and ninth in OPS. A criticism of Ellsbury in his youth was his low on-base percentage. Well, just two teams in the league had a worse OBP mark in the leadoff spot than Boston's .318, which incidentally is 37 points less than Ellsbury’s mark in 2009.
As for stolen bases, the Red Sox' leadoff hitters had a grand total of nine. No other team had fewer than 20 from that spot, and we all know about Ellsbury’s record-setting 70 in '09.
It is undeniable that Ellsbury's season was affected more by injury than any of his teammates. There is no doubt that he has more uncertainty surrounding his future with the team than Youkilis or Pedroia, fellow cornerstones whose campaigns were cut short. But because of all the issues which took place while Ellsbury was sidelined, there are plenty of those who were unaware of how sorely he was missed in 2010.
Again, the club does not need Ellsbury to break all of Rickey Henderson's records in 2011. Nor does it want him to become an outcast. If 2010 can be put in the past, that happy medium can be achieved.
"If he does what he’s capable of doing, being an offensive catalyst and a guy who contributes not only with the bat but also defensively and on the bases," Epstein said, "he'll pick up where he left off [in 2009]."
