Player Profile: Jacoby Ellsbury

Player Background

Jacoby Ellsbury was a first-round pick by the Red Sox, came up to help them take home the 2007 World Series, and has generally been one of the more polarizing players in baseball since. When he’s healthy and at his best, he’s one of the most dynamic in the league, but those times have been anything but consistent. Still, he played well enough in Boston to get himself a massive seven-year, $153 million contract from the Yankees. He started out the contract with a solid 2014, finishing as a top-15 fantasy outfielder. Heading into 2015, he was being drafted as the 10th outfielder off the board and 30th overall. The BP fantasy team had him ranked sixth among OF options, sitting near the top of the four-star tier.

What Went Right in 2015

Not very much. Ellsbury dropped in every category from his solid 2014 campaign. He wound up with an underwhelming .257/.318/.345 line and a .251 TAv that was just one point better than his full-season career-worst. The one slight positive you may be able to find in his season is stolen bases. He swiped 21 bags in 2015, finishing in the top 25 overall. However, that is a huge drop off from his career norms, as you’re hoping for a top-five finish in this category when you draft Ellsbury.

What Went Wrong in 2015

So, so much. As I mentioned above, he fell in just about every category. He missed a good chunk of the season in May and June, while also sitting off and on with nagging injuries later in the year, ending up with just 111 games played this year. This, combined with bad rates led to poor counting stats. Although he’s never been a true power hitter (except his bizarre 2011), his seven home runs is still a tiny number for Ellsbury. Despite hitting near or at the top of the second highest-scoring offense in baseball, he managed 66 runs, the fewest he’s ever scored when playing in at least half of his team’s games. Most alarmingly, however, he watched his batting average to .257, at least 14 points worse than any other season besides 2010, when he played in just 18 games.

What to Expect in 2016

One thing we can be sure of looking ahead to drafts next spring is that Ellsbury will be taken much later than he was this year. That doesn’t mean he’s necessarily a good buy-low candidate, however. A lot of his issues are the kind that one could expect to happen to an aging player who has battled injuries through his entire career, and they don’t necessarily project to get better. As mentioned above, he hit for very little power, finishing with an abysmal .088 ISO. Looking deeper, it doesn’t appear to be a fluke. Ellsbury watched his average flyball distance decrease by eight feet, moving him from 63rd on the 2014 leaderboard to 226th on this year’s. Meanwhile, he made very little hard contact in general, having a lower average batted-ball velocity than all but 82 of the 345 major-league batters with at least 100 balls in play.

It’s not just the power that’s concerning, either. Ellsbury watched his batting average and on-base percentage fall dramatically this year, as well. That’s not only going to hurt him in those categories, of course, as they’ll affect his stolen base and runs scored outputs as well. Unfortunately, this isn’t simply a BABIP issue, but is instead a problem with his plate discipline. Ellsbury whiffed at more pitches than he ever had by a significant margin. More specifically, he struggled more than ever to catch up to pitches up in the zone:

One can’t even expect Ellsbury to see a big bounceback in stolen bases, given his injury history and the fact that New York was near the bottom of the league in attempted steals despite rostering Ellsbury and Brett Gardner. While he should certainly be better than a career-worst 2015, he’ll be entering his age-32 season next year, and expecting even his 2014 production is asking for too much.

The Great Beyond

After reading the previous section, it shouldn’t be hard to predict how I feel about his long-term value. The only good news is he’s locked in to a huge contract, and should continue to get playing time for the foreseeable future. While selling him is the best play for a dynasty owner, now isn’t the best time considering what he’s coming off of. The best strategy would be to hope he gets off to a hot start in 2016—he had a .783 OPS in the first six weeks this year—and sell him off then before he starts to break down as the year grinds on. Alternatively, you could hope he has a big postseason and find someone who gets overly excited about it. When he’s at his best, Ellsbury is a thrill to roster in fantasy, but this year showed that those days will be few and far between moving forward.