Yankees Jacoby Ellsbury from “cult hero” to Comeback Player of the Year?

In September 2007, just two weeks after his big league call-up with the Boston Red Sox, Jack Curry, Yankees writer for the New York Times, described Jacoby Ellsbury as a “cult hero.”

Long before the Yankees, Ellsbury was hitting at a .375 clip with three home runs and had gotten a hit in 12 consecutive games since that Sept 1 promotion. Curry says in the article that Ellsbury brings “speed, improved defense and unbridled enthusiasm” to the team.

At the time Curry wrote the article, Ellsbury had already made his major league debut with the Red Sox in July against the Rangers. In a game on July 2, Ellsbury got his first stolen base off of pitcher Brandon McCarthy and catcher Gerald Laird. He also scored on a wild pitch from second base, a play Johnny Pesky described as “the greatest single play I’ve seen in all my years in baseball.”

Fast forward through Ellsbury’s record-setting career with the Red Sox — the Yankees “stole” arguably the best leadoff hitter in baseball in 2013 when they signed Ellsbury to a lavish contract, the third largest to an outfielder in baseball history.

At the time of the signing, Brian Hoch of MLB.com wrote:

“Ellsbury’s signing shows they’re resurrecting the fury they unloaded on the rest of the league when they failed to make the playoffs in 2008… apparently they’re intent on having another parade in 11 months.”

The Yankees had failed to make the playoffs in 2013 for only the second time in 19 years. The mandate, then, for the Ellsbury signing was, bring a World Series back to New York.

Hoch predicted, quite correctly, that while “the Yankees might have won the sweepstakes [in signing Ellsbury], Boras might have just gotten the last laugh.”

Here is Joe Posnanski of MLB.NBCSports.com prediction of the Ellsbury signing just days after it happened:

“These huge, later-career deals never turn out great. The best you can hope for when you sign a 30-something baseball player to a hugely expensive long-term deal is that he will have a couple of good years on the front end to boost up his value, have a nice rebound year somewhere in the middle, and not be utterly useless and difficult to deal with at the end.”

When the Yankees signed Ellsbury after his World Series run with the Red Sox, he had batted .298 in 134 games with 52 stolen bases, the third time he led the AL in this category. He was a career .297 hitter with a .350 on-base percentage.  None of the parties could see into the future, however, such predictions, as Hoch and Posnanski believed when the contract was signed, have proved correct.

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Most Yankees fans would say that Ellsbury has never performed with the club to the level he showed during his career with the Red Sox.

Injuries have plagued him, and both his offensive and defensive numbers have declined steadily. In fact, nearly all of his appearances on the leaderboards for hitting and fielding came before him joining the Yankees. Ellsbury has been unremarkable in Postseason performances as well.

Sweeney Murti has noted that “Overall, Ellsbury has 10 postseason at-bats as a Yankee, no hits and has played one inning in center field (the ninth inning of the 2015 Wild Card loss to Houston).

Jacoby Ellsbury has become an albatross around the Yankees’ collective necks, sporting, as he does, a “lavish” contract and a diminishing performance. He is also holding down a spot coveted by younger players, like Clint Frazier, Billy McKinney and Jake Cave.

Sweeney Murti recently said:

“You know who doesn’t fit? Ellsbury, the guy with three years and $68 million left on his contract, plus that pesky no-trade clause. We know the Yankees’ motivation to move him, but what is Ellsbury’s to accept? Maybe it’s simply to find a place he can play. Having already lost his starting job to Hicks, the Stanton trade left Ellsbury with no real position on this team.

With a full no-trade clause, Ellsbury is in control of his destiny, but, fortunately, not the destiny of this juggernaut season the Yankees look to have in 2018 with the addition of Giancarlo Stanton. Ellsbury’s agent, Scott Boras, recently described the situation in New York from Ellsbury’s perspective. Per NJ.com:

“Right now he’s pretty excited. Talked to him yesterday. He feels he’s going to be a major part of what they’re doing,” Boras told reporters. “I think there’s going to be a competition in New York. They have a lot of diamonds in their jewelry store, no question about it. It’s going to be a very healthy environment and Jacoby has done a lot of big things in a lot of big situations in a lot of big cities, so competition does not in any way do anything but exhilarate him.”

Barring any unforeseen hot stove news, then, Ellsbury is the fourth, if not the fifth, outfielder and he’s bringing that “unbridled enthusiasm,” as Curry called it, with him.

Next: RIP Derby

If there is going to be competition for the center field position, will it be Ellsbury who provides it, or will Aaron Hicks and Clint Frazier have something to say about it? Ellsbury won Comeback Player of the Year in 2011, could he be poised to do it again and perhaps, once again garner a cult following, but this time, in the Bronx?