Best Names of the 2011 MLB Draft

Just as we did last year, this year we kept track of the best names drafted in the 2011 MLB draft. 2011 wasn’t a particularly strong draft. It didn’t give us any Goodrums or Greathouses, but—carrying over Kendrick Perkins (Red Sox) from last year—we were able to field a full (but still bad) NBA starting 5, with Perkins, Brad Miller, Matt Barnes, Aaron Brooks, and Derek Fisher.

ROUND 1
Bubba Starling (Kansas City Royals)
Matt Barnes (Boston Red Sox) - not this Matt Barnes
Joe Panik (San Francisco Giants)
Mikie Mahtook (Tampa Bay Rays)

COMP ROUND A
Brad Miller (Seattle Mariners) - not this Brad Miller
Austin Hedges (San Diego Padres) - We like when names are also complete sentences.

ROUND 3
Bryan Brickhouse (Kansas City Royals)

ROUND 4 
Kylin Turnbull (Washington Nationals)
Dillon Thomas (Colorado Rockies)
Kenneth Peoples-Walls (St. Louis Cardinals) 

ROUND 5
John Leathersich (New York Mets)
Taylor Featherston (Colorado Rockies)
Chris Marlowe (San Francisco Giants)

ROUND 6
Derek Fisher (Texas Rangers)
David Goforth (Milwaukee Brewers) - He was also drafted last year by the Indians.

ROUND 7
Abel Baker (Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim of California Angels)

ROUND 8
Kevin Quackenbush (San Diego Padres)

ROUND 9
Aaron Brooks (Kansas City Royals)

ROUND 13
Stephen Lumpkins (Kansas City Royals)

ROUND 17
Adam Choplick (Arizona Diamondbacks)

ROUND 27
Derrick Loveless (Toronto Blue Jays)
Steven Snodgrass (San Francisco Giants)

ROUND 31 
Aaron Bummer (New York Yankees)

ROUND 34
Adam Weisenburger  (Milwaukee Brewers)

ROUND 38
Devin Shines (Los Angeles Dodgers)

ROUND 40
Raphael Rhymes (Pittsburgh Pirates)
Jordan Gross (Boston Red Sox)

ROUND 42
Joseph Pankake (Texas Rangers)

ROUND 48
Malcolm Clapsaddle (New York Mets) 

ROUND 50
Travis Pitcher (Oakland Athletics)

Any Day Ellsbury #4: Very Superstitious

Inspired by Ted Walker’s “Every Day Ichiro” over at Pitchers & Poets, I’ll be chronicling the 2011 Red Sox season by paying close attention to outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury.

I have no idea if Jacoby Ellsbury has any kind of pregame rituals or superstitions. I haven’t even noticed if he has prepitch routine. (I did, however, notice that a few games ago, in his first AB, Ellsbury did the thing Ichiro does where he holds his right arm straight out, holding the bat vertically. I’ve never noticed him do that before, and I haven’t seen him do it since.) I’m not sure it matters for the purposes of this post, anyway; the fact that I’ve started every sentence so far with “I” should make it clear that this post is about more about me than Ellsbury. When it comes to baseball, I am very superstitious. 

Two nights ago, Ellsbury’s 19-game hitting streak was snapped by an 0-4 night at the plate. Around 15 games, I started thinking, “If he keeps this going, I’m going to have to write about it.” At 18 games, I thought, “Well, I don’t want to jinx him.” Yes, I do, in fact, know how silly it is to think that a blog post discussing Ellsbury’s hitting streak could ruin it, just as I think it’s silly any time a fan thinks any of his or her actions can directly influence the outcome of a game. But for some reason my own weird baseball-related superstitions have never gone away.

Baseball, maybe more than any other sport, is full of these little eccentricities. Teammates don’t talk to a pitcher in the middle of a no-hitter. The words “perfect game” or “no-hitter” are off limits until the possibility of either has disappeared. Players avoid stepping on the foul lines while taking the field, except for those players who go out of their way to always step on the line. Then there are all the different prepitch routines. These are only examples of on the field routines. Back when my brother was still playing, if he hit a home run one day, he had to eat the same exact meals the next day (a fact I found very entertaining when he opened the 2001 season with homers in his first three games).

As for myself: back when I played, I believed in not washing my white sanitary socks (for those who don’t know, those are the socks that go under your stirrups) until I went hitless in a game. The same went for my long-sleeve undershirt. Needless to say, I had moments on my summer league teams where I probably smelled really disgusting. Anyway, those days are long gone (I’m OLD!), but apparently some kind of remnants have lingered long enough for me to think I could have ruined Ellsbury’s hit streak. Fortunately, I can write this knowing I had nothing to do with his streak’s end. 

Ellsbury gets a chance to start a new streak tonight as the Red Sox visit Yankee Stadium.

Any Day Ellsbury #3: Where I Ramble About Stephen Crane and Ellsbury the Killer Robot

Inspired by Ted Walker’s “Every Day Ichiro” over at Pitchers & Poets, I’ll be chronicling the 2011 Red Sox season by paying close attention to outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury.

I’ve always been drawn to people in the middle of things. One of my former literature professors called them “characters on edges.” Stephen Crane’s Jack Potter, town marshal of Yellow Sky in “The Bride Comes to Yellow Sky,” has always been one of my favorite characters because of how he had one foot in the diminishing Wild West and the other in the more civilized West. Newland Archer—despite his Hamlet-esque waffling in Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence—is another, simply because he was torn between two smoking hot babes who apparently represented old Victorian values and a new age of American modernism. If you’re not yet wondering what this has to do with Jacoby Ellsbury, then congratulations, you are just as nerdy as I am. I wrote before that I’m drawn to Ellsbury’s extremes; he struggles badly and goes on crazy hot streaks. Ellsbury constantly hovers on the precipice of greatness and mediocrity. 

Ellsbury’s ridiculous speed and athleticism might be all that keeps him from sliding into mediocrity. He is, in all other aspects, a rather generic baseball player. He’s an outfielder who is decent at reading the ball off the bat but makes up for bad jumps by being super fast, and he has a below-average throwing arm. His streaky hitting is usually caused by his mechanics getting a little out of wack. In short: Ellsbury is close to being a replacement level player. Maybe this doesn’t surprise a lot of people. I know a fair amount of Boston fans were ready to ship him out last season. But when he’s on his game (which he has been lately), Ellsbury looks less like the generic, Randy Winn-type outfielder and more like the electrifying Carl Crawford-type player.* Maybe that’s an unnecessary shot at Winn, but the point is that Winn is an entirely unremarkable player.

*While discussing this post with a friend of mine, he said Randy Winn wishes he could be as good as Carl Crawford while Crawford is currently playing like Randy Winn.

Since Ellsbury’s athleticism is what separates him from the pack, it’s what I find myself focusing on. I look for smiles, laughter, and other facial expressions, even the slightest burst of anger at a bad call or a swing he’d like to take back, but there’s almost never anything there. It’s as if Ellsbury has learned his on-field demeanor from JD Drew, who is only notable in that he never expresses any emotion. He is often robotic, and Ellsbury has adopted Drew’s machine-like qualities. Ellsbury is always stone-faced and sometimes seems cold, which makes his speed that much more fun. Everyone knows that, once he’s on first, he’s going to steal second. It’s a programmed decision, and Ellsbury is only calculating the precise pitch to run on. Sometimes he teases the pitcher into throwing to first a billion times, making the pitcher think maybe he’s held Ellsbury close enough to prevent the theft. And when he steals anyway, I like to imagine it crushes the soul of the pitcher, because he’s less of a replacement level player and more of a killer robot designed to crush spirits.

*Photo courtesy of Keith Allison via Creative Commons License

Any Day Ellsbury #2: The Weekend in Jacoby

Inspired by Ted Walker’s “Every Day Ichiro” over at Pitchers & Poets, I’ll be chronicling the 2011 Red Sox season by paying close attention to outfielder Jacoby Ellsbury.

Ellsbury hasn’t done a whole lot to write about so far. He has made a couple of nice defensive plays, he’s still struggling at the plate, and—like all of the Red Sox—he’s been upstaged by Dustin Pedroia’s “Laser Show.” Pedroia seems to want to carry the whole team on his back, and he’s doing a damn fine job of it. At times I thought I picked the wrong player to follow for the season, but there’s just something more attractive about a player who can both be an offensive spark and also struggle at times. I wonder what goes through the mind of a player like Ellsbury when he looks so visibly disappointed at himself after watching a perfect fastball go by him for a called strike. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised if Pedroia never went through another slump ever again. 

On to the weekend: I’ll admit I didn’t watch an entire game this weekend, but I did catch most of all three games. I spent most of the weekend doing household chores and watching sports, rotating through baseball and the NBA playoffs. Baseball has always been my favorite sport, so I always go back to it. Ellsbury served as my anchor this weekend; no matter what I did, I did my best not to miss an Ellsbury at-bat. Washing dishes can be quite relaxing with the TV volume loud enough to hear Remy’s and Orsillo’s voices over the swoosh of soapy water. 

Despite not having a hit on Saturday, Ellsbury showed why he can be such an asset to the Sox offense with two walks. I’m okay with Ellsbury walks because they’re pretty much the same as a double. After a walk in the second inning, I (and all of Fenway) expected Ellsbury to steal second, which led to a number of throw-overs by Jays pitcher Jo-Jo Reyes, which ultimately led to a Jed Lowrie home run. I feel like it’s easy to overrate the effect a runner can have on distracting a pitcher from the batter, but I do think there’s something to it. Maybe some advanced stats guys can educate me on that. (Also, Ian and I have been on the #FreeJedLowrie hashtag on the Twittermachines.)

On Sunday, he crushed a ball around the Pesky Pole for his third homer of the season. Three homers for Ellsbury this early in the season is a bit surprising, if not a little troubling. As Remy pointed out, his swing had a bit of an uppercut motion to it. I don’t really want him trying to hit homers. I want him hitting line drives, which he’s not doing right now. He is, however, getting walks, which is nice. 

Ellsbury’s been bounced from leadoff to the 8- and 9-spots in the lineup, which is indicative of how much lineup shuffling has been going on with the Sox in general. I believe most of the shuffling is caused by trying to get Crawford going and finding a consistent spot for him in the lineup. Ideally, I’d like to see Ellsbury leading off, followed by Crawford and Pedroia, but the Sox lineup has so many offensive weapons—especially when Lowrie is in there—that finding a consistent lineup can be difficult.

Any Day Ellsbury #1: Intro, 0-5, and 0-6

Ted Walker of Pitchers & Poets has been doing a wonderful ongoing project called “Every Day Ichiro,” where he tracks the Seattle Mariners’ season through the lens of Ichiro Suzuki. I’ve chatted briefly with him about my idea of doing the same thing with Jacoby Ellsbury. I’ve been fascinated with Ellsbury ever since he appeared with the Boston Red Sox in 2007 and played an integral role in the team’s World Series run. The fact that both he and I went to Oregon State University certainly helped me jump on the Ellsbury speed train as well. In baseball, I’m always drawn to the hyper-athletic, speedy players like Ellsbury (and Ichiro). These players demand attention because every pitch might lead to something brilliant; with them, diving-catch highlights, inside-the-park homers, and any other exciting or rare feat is always a possibility. Any poorly hit ground ball still might result in a single, which will probably result in a stolen base, which can easily change the dynamic of a game. So, inspired by Ted, I’ve decided to track the 2011 Boston Red Sox season through Ellsbury.

I decided to go with “Any Day Ellsbury” instead of “Every Day Ellsbury” for a few reasons. The first simple reason is that 162 games is a lot of games to write about, let alone watch. For example, today’s first pitch was at 12:05 p.m., which means I couldn’t watch it while at work. Also, while Ellsbury makes fun baseball plays, he doesn’t really carry the enigmatic, zen-like presence of Ichiro. (The closest thing Ellsbury might have to that is that Red Sox fans think he’s dreamy looking.) Still, on any given day, Ellsbury might do something that makes me think, “I need to write about this!”

Last night, Ellsbury went 0-5 (same as the Red Sox record at the time!) bringing his batting average to .143. I should be in panic mode, right? I mean, Red Sox Nation is! Okay, maybe the Nation isn’t on red alert, but no one thought it would take this long for the Sox to get a win. I’ve always wondered what goes through a professional athlete’s head after a 3-strikeout, 0-5 game after the the postgame interview or the immediate frustration. I wonder what lingers, if anything, after a game like that, and after six games without a win. 

Sure, it’s a long season, but Ellsbury’s final AB last night (broken bat groundout to second) pretty much sums up the Red Sox season so far.

*Top photo courtesy of Keith Allison via Creative Commons License