Earlier today I heard a bit of an interview with Peter Gammons on WEEI and he discussed some interesting topics, but the one that really caught my attention was the discussion on Jacoby Ellsbury. Gammons believed the Red Sox should and are contemplating a move for Ellsbury to left field. I have done some research into this before, but there was a new argument for doing this.
Gammons believes that stealing 70 bases is beating up Ellsbury and making him less effective defensively. His reasoning is a comment he attributed to Rickey Henderson that I have been unable to locate. Henderson claims that his extensive number of steals was beating up his body and effecting his ability to man center field.
Perhaps this is real and should be something we should look into as Rickey did not play center field until he was 26 years old in 1985 when he joined the Yankees. His defense was very good, but did fall steadily for the next few years until 1988 when he again returned to full time left field. Interestingly he had his worst TZ rating that year in NY, but still a plus 6.
When he left New York though he is return to double digit positive TZ ratings in left field until his defense became average around 1991 at the age of 32. This seams reasonable enough, but would this beating he took amassing all the steals also effect his hitting?
When Rickey moved back to left field in 1987 he suffered through a injury plagued season and only played 95 games. This could be partially due to the position change. Will Carroll found that changing positions raises injury risk by 30%. This is a risk we would have to account for with Ellsbury as well.
If we look past the injury though there is not much evidence the move helped him offensively. Before his return to left he had an OPS of .878 in 1985-86 and was at .867 after the injury year in 1988-90. There really was no difference except for the injury he incurred in 1987.
It doesn’t seem like wear and tear is effecting the offensive output of Ellsbury either. His month by month numbers were fairly solid last year. His worst month was April before he stole 10 bases. In fact his OPS was higher in the second half of 2009.
So far this effect doesn’t seem to be something we can easily see if it’s true at all. Does the effect only hurt his defense if he’s in center field as Rickey was fine in Oakland in left field? Once again we can’t be sure and Ellsbury has much less mileage on his legs when you start comparing him to Rickey Henderson.
Some good news is while everyone has spent the last year beating Ellsbury with the UZR stick we have TZ to sedate them a bit. Now that it has been updated to include 2009 he has a career TZ number of 21 with a excellent 2008 at 23 and an average 2009 at -5. That bodes well for him in center field, but could be even better in left field.
Before we discuss moving Ellsbury we should talk about his replacement in center field. Mike Cameron has played a total of 3 defensive games in left field in his entire career. That is 77 less than Ellsbury. Then looking at his UZR numbers outside of the years in New York that included the horrific crash with Carlos Beltran he is a stellar center fielder.
All this leads me to believe that based on the current team makeup the best outfield would be Ellsbury in left, Cameron in center and J.D. Drew in right. Based on CHONE defensive projections you would have a 15 Total Zone rating, which would be much better than last year. This projection is also based on Ellsbury in center field and could be even better.
In conclusion I don’t think the wear and tear of stealing 70+ bases is enough to cause the poor defense we saw in 2009, but that isn’t to say Ellsbury wouldn’t be better in left field for all of 2010. It’s a close call with positional adjustments since center field is a +2.5 and left field is a -7.5. That is a ten run shift or one win difference meaning he need to be ten runs better defensively in left field to make up for the shift.
The same occurs to Cameron so who plays there isn’t so much a matter of the position adjustment, but more of who can play the best defense in each position. I think this is why the Red Sox are slow to name a position for either of them yet. Heading into spring training they could continue to wath the players in each spot and see who responds best.