Major League Baseball

Yankees' Ellsbury a question mark heading into postseason

Updated Mar. 5, 2020 1:44 a.m. ET

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When the Yankees signed Jacoby Ellsbury to a seven-year, $153 million contract in the offseason before 2014, they were certainly hoping for at least a version of the 2011 center fielder: a speedy, defensively-sound player with serious power upside. A prevalent thought was that the short porch in Yankee Stadium’s right field might help him regain some of his power after injury-marred seasons in 2012 and 2013.

Following a healthy 2014 -- in which the left-hander was able to post a respectable but not outstanding power/speed combination while staying relatively healthy -- 2015 has seen Ellsbury take a step back. In recent weeks, during the thick of a September pennant race, he’s actually sat against left-handed pitching in favor of Chris Young. These are the depths of the slump that Ellsbury is currently in, and it’s obviously not the return on investment the Yankees had in mind when signing him to this sort of long-term deal.

With New York headed toward a very probable wild-card berth, it's time to take a close look at Ellsbury. What are the driving factors behind his current struggles? What is the outlook for the Yankees without his production?

We assign many beginning and end dates to baseball statistics, which is a part of our natural desire to organize things we’re trying to understand. We’re going to do that now, because it's necessary for us to understand Ellsbury’s season before and after a certain event. The Yankees center fielder has had two very different halves of the season -- separated by seven weeks on the disabled list with a knee injury -- and understanding how they're different is the first step we'll take in evaluating his performance.

During the first six weeks of the season, Ellsbury was putting up great leadoff numbers: although the power stroke wasn’t quite there (he hit only one home run along with a .047 Isolated Power average before May 19th), he was still creating runs for his team at a 25% greater rate than a league-average player.

The classic Ellsbury tools were on display during this stage of the season. He was hitting lots of line drives, showing great speed on the base paths, and playing sound defense in center field. The 32-year-old was even walking at a much higher clip than his career norm (11.2% vs. 7.0%) in April and the first two weeks of May. The caveat with those stats, of course, is that six weeks is a small sample size, so whether he would have continued his early season production is hard to gauge.

The reason we don’t know whether those improvements would have stuck is part of a familiar trend for Ellsbury: he sprained his right knee during a swing on May 19th, eventually spending almost two months on the disabled list. Apart from any talk about his potential injury proneness (we should remind ourselves that most of his major injuries have been due to freakish impacts with other players), it’s difficult to miss two months in the middle of the season and come back without any rust.

So, whether the knee injury is still lingering or not, we can see the impact of the extended mid-season break in his numbers. Let’s take a look at a few select offensive stats before and after the injury compared to his career norms:

Perhaps most striking are the strikeout and walk rates, which went from an improvement over his career marks before the injury to well below what we’re used to seeing out of him since coming back. Some of his early season success and late season struggles can be attributed to batted-ball luck, as he was fortunate early on and unlucky since returning; still, the manifestation of his current issues at the plate can be seen most acutely in his increased strikeouts and decreased walks.

In terms of what is driving these poor post-injury numbers, Ellsbury's plate discipline is largely to blame. Take a look at his swing rates on pitches inside of the strike zone vs. outside of it within the same timeframe we’ve been discussing, compared to 2014 (abbreviations for stats are "O" for outside the strike zone and "Z" for inside the strike zone):

Not only is Ellsbury swinging more in general since coming back from the knee injury, he’s doing so mainly at pitches outside of the strike zone. In addition, his contact rate on pitches outside of the strike zone has fallen precipitously, leading to a double whammy of more swings on bad pitches and less contact on them -- meaning less foul balls, fewer walks, and more strikeouts.

The reason for periods of poor plate discipline can be hard to identify, but we should certainly keep in mind that these past two months have been an aberration from many years of what Ellsbury has traditionally done. Usually 32-year-olds don't suddenly fall off a cliff related to their plate discipline and contact rates, so a regression to his previously established walk and strikeout rates is more likely than not. That assumes, of course, he is not still injured -- something he has denied being a factor for this slump. His limited stolen base totals since returning from the injury, however, won't do much to dispel any rumors.

According to the Yankees, they've identified the problem with Ellsbury's swing, and it relates to the inconsistent landing point of his front foot. For fun, I've pulled a video of his swing during 2011, and a video from earlier this month. Let's compare, with 2011 on the left and 2015 on the right. I've paused the graphic at the apex of the leg kick so it's a little easier to compare -- also pay attention to when the foot comes back down.

While the difference is subtle, the front leg is operating very differently in his recent swing. The leg kick is much higher now, and Ellsbury doesn't get his foot back down until the pitch is almost on him. Compare that to the swing from 2011: the leg kick is shorter, his foot comes back down very quickly, and the chain of the swing starts from the legs much more than the recent swing.

I am not a swing mechanics expert by any means, and using one swing as an example has its drawbacks and limitations. A higher leg kick is hard to master, however, and it can leave a hitter's timing in disarray if not implemented correctly. Given Ellsbury's recent susceptibility to offspeed pitches, his timing with the front foot is no doubt something he and the team are focusing on. However, regardless of any mechanical issues, the main problem is that Ellsbury is not being patient at the plate. Everything starts with his approach and moves outward.

Unfortunately, the Yankees don't have a lot of time to sit around and wait for Ellsbury to work this out. There's simply not much season left, and with a likely Wild Card game in just over a week, New York is now facing the proposition of entering the postseason with the highest-paid center fielder in baseball as a big question mark. In many ways, this has been another lost season for a quintessentially mercurial player; yet one more year that establishes his fantastic 2011 in starker relief as a departure -- not a reflection -- of the norm.

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