Jacoby Ellsbury Injured? As Boston's Best CF in 60 Years, Red Sox Sure Hope Not

Jacoby Ellsbury: This post might contain the first-ever mention of Dom DiMaggio at Bleacher Report.
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Just how good was Jacoby Ellsbury last year? By at least one measure he was the best Red Sox outfielder of the last 62 years. As we wait to find out how long Ellsbury will be out after today’s shoulder injury (if at all), consider just how hard a player of his caliber would be to replace.

The Red Sox faced this same issue in 2010, when Ellsbury lost almost the entire season to five broken ribs, but he had yet to play at the level he did in 2011.

Wins Above Replacement depicts how many wins a player contributed over and above what would have been supplied by a “replacement-level” player, usually defined as being a Triple-A veteran or player who would be freely available on the waiver wire.

Using this kind of measure, we can compare players across time. For the purposes of this exercise, I’m using Baseball Prospectus’s sortable WARP engine. All of the stats are the ones you would expect with the exception of Fielding Runs Above Average (FRAA), which attempts to measure how many runs a player saved with his glove. Here is the top 15, Truman-Eisenhower years and up:

#	YEAR	NAME	AB	R	H	HR	RBI	BB	SB	FRAA	AVG	OBP	SLG	WARP
1	2011	J. Ellsbury	660	119	212	32	105	52	39	11.6	.321	.376	.552	8.6
2	1979	F. Lynn	531	116	177	39	122	82	2	4	.333	.423	.637	8.1
3	1970	R.Smith	580	109	176	22	74	51	10	12.5	.303	.361	.497	6.5
4	1971	R. Smith	618	85	175	30	96	63	11	6.2	.283	.352	.489	6.1
5	1969	R. Smith	543	87	168	25	93	54	7	9.3	.309	.368	.527	6
6	1956	J. Piersall	601	91	176	14	87	58	7	14	.293	.350	.449	5.7
7	2004	J. Damon	621	123	189	20	94	76	19	9.4	.304	.380	.477	5.5
8	2005	J. Damon	624	117	197	10	75	53	18	12.4	.316	.366	.439	5.5
9	1973	R. Smith	423	79	128	21	69	68	3	7.7	.303	.398	.515	5.4
10	1975	F. Lynn	528	103	175	21	105	62	10	-7.3	.331	.401	.566	5.4
11	1968	R. Smith	558	78	148	15	69	64	22	3.3	.265	.342	.430	5.3
12	1964	C. Yastrzemski	567	77	164	15	67	75	6	13.3	.289	.374	.451	5.2
13	1950	D. Dimaggio	588	131	193	7	70	82	15	6.7	.328	.414	.452	5.1
14	1988	E. Burks	540	93	159	18	92	62	25	2.2	.294	.367	.481	4.7
15	1976	F. Lynn	507	76	159	10	65	48	14	0.8	.314	.367	.467	4.6

A few quick notes:

1. It’s always good to be reminded of how good a player Reggie Smith was. A switch-hitter with power, patience, and speed, he could do a bit of everything. Due to injuries his career didn’t have the long wind-down that might have given him bigger career numbers, but he was better than any number of Hall of Famers.

2. Another reminder: the incompetence of the Heywood Sullivan-Buddy LeRoux-managed front office that cost the Red Sox both Carlton Fisk and Fred Lynn during the 1980-1981 offseason. Lynn had his injury problems, but he was made for Fenway, with career averages of .350/.423/.608 there. How do you screw that up? A: By not sending him a contract, that’s how.

3. Yaz really did get one year of center field play early in his career due to Gary Geiger’s forced retirement due to stomach problems.

Maybe the Sox should have gone harder after Yoenis Cespedes. Again, we have yet to learn Ellsbury’s ultimate fate, and even if the Sox were loaded with outfield prospects, you can’t easily replace a six- or eight-win player. It’s scary just how good Ellsbury was in 2011—and how much his loss might hurt in 2012.

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