Jacoby Ellsbury and The New Red Sox Lineup

A quick look at a post by Jack Moore at RotoHardball shows the benefit a change in lineup can make. In short, the difference between batting second and batting fifth can be as much as .33 plate appearances a game, or around 50 a season.

A quick look at the nearest newswire will show you that the Red Sox have managed to revamp their lineup in just a few short days. At issue is what the new lineup will look like, especially since the team is now so lefty-heavy. It may not mean the difference between a good and bad season, but 50 plate appearances is not something to sneeze at.

In the last week, Buster Olney famously submitted his new lineup and then Carson Cistulli updated it by using Baseball Musing’s lineup optimizer tool. These two lineups are pretty different, but there is one similarity worth discussing further from a fantasy angle.

Yes, both the stat-head lineup and the traditional lineup feature Jacoby Ellsbury in the nine-hole. Maybe one focused on his 6.7% career walk rate, and the other was looking at Ellsbury as the ‘second leadoff man,’ but the results were clear enough that they strongly suggest that’s where Ellsbury will end up. That’s not a good thing for those projecting a bounce-back for Ellsbury.

It’s not that he can’t have success at the bottom of the order. It’s just that we have to temper the plate appearances. In 2009, he racked up 693 plate appearances – and that would make the Bill James’ projection (674 plate appearances) seem reasonable. However, Ellsbury had 504 plate appearances in the leadoff spot that year, where the average player (per Tango’s The Book) has 4.83 plate appearances per game. In the nine hole, Ellsbury could expect to see 3.90 plate appearances per game. That’s almost a full plate appearance per game.

Let’s take that .93 PA per game away from his 2009 numbers then. That’s a full 150 plate appearances fewer, meaning Ellsbury might hope to approach 540 or 550 plate appearances should he play in the nine hole most days.

But we also know that this figure represents the best possible upside.

Judging from Chris Cwik’s column on Friday, Ellsbury, J.D. Drew, Mike Cameron and David Ortiz may be splitting some time in the outfield and at DH, provided the tam does not move one of the group in the next few weeks.

After considering this group, the best probable scenario has Cameron as more or less a fourth outfielder and Ortiz as a platoon DH. Ortiz did put up a .268 wOBA against lefties last year, his third straight year of below-average work against southpaws. That’s 200 PAs that could go to someone else next year. Drew has been injured off and on the last few years, and usually ends up around 550 PAs, which is about 100 PAs short of a full ride in right field and his position in the lineup.

Would Mike Cameron be okay with 300 PAs? That would allow Ellsbury to enjoy 550 plate appearances in center field. The team says that they rate Ellsbury’s defense as above-average, and Cameron’s defense fell off, but short-sample UZRs are not so useful. If the two of them instead split the 850 plate appearances – meaning everyone stays healthy and Cameron and Ellsbury are essentially sharing center and the leftover PAs in right and at DH – then you’re looking at 425 PAs for Ellsbury.

This is no science, but you’re looking at a range between 400 and 550 plate appearances for Ellsbury most likely, and a risk that he gets only 350 or so as the backup. That means the real best case scenario – 550 plate appearances – would have Ellsbury with 153 hits, 83 runs and 48 steals using Bill James projections. That could be helpful if his draft spot drops, but the risk – 350 plate appearances – is that he ends up with 97 hits, 53 runs and 30 stolen bases.

And those projections are all using Bill James’ numbers, oft thought to be the rosiest of the mainstream projections.

Edit: On Saturday, this came through the interwebs:

Red Sox manager Terry Francona expects to bat Carl Crawford second or third in 2011, with Jacoby Ellsbury leading off.
“I’ll sit down with Carl, I’ll sit down with Pedey,” Francona said. “Obviously, he’s going to hit somewhere in the top of the order, second or third. But we want to have some balance, as much as we can, with Adrian and Youk following and David (Ortiz) and J.D. (Drew). There’s some things to think about.” We doubt Pedroia will be dropped in the order, so we tentatively expect him to hit second and Pedroia to bat third.

There’s a lot of risk here. I’m not even sure that more information in Spring Training will remove that uncertainty. Draft Ellsbury at your own peril.