Article:Ellsbury and Lester... overhype?

In their 2007 world series run, the Boston Red Sox got great contribution from rookie Jacob Ellsbury and youngest Jon Lester. Ellsbury hit .353 /.394 /.509 in his September callup and then went on to hit a wooping   .360 /.429/.520 in the playoffs, most of his ABs comming inthe world series. where he was basically unstoppable with a    .438/ .500/ .688 line.

Lester on the other hand. started the clincher for Boston and shutdown the Rockies for 5.2 innings.

Impressive clutch performance no doubt. combining with great personal stories on both individual (Ellsbury being one of the very few Ind....ahem NATIVE AMERICAN players in the game and Lester fought back from cancer ) prompted a great buzz around the two players. and with the upcomming (or rather already begining in the Red Sox's case) season. both are counted on for a vital role on the Red Sox. and they're part of the reason why many in the mainstream media and online fans / bloggers / "experts" predict the Red Sox to take the AL East again.. (and in many prediction even running away with the division).

Zealous Sox fans have even gone on to compare Ellsbury to Grady Sizemore and think Lester will be a front line starter starting this season.

Are those expectation on the two players just? I'm having a hard time seeing it. here's a few question i'm going to raise on the two pitchers. I love to see some input.

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First let's get to Lester: drafted out of HS in 02 he had a decent 03 season in A ball (good ERA. iffy K/BB ratio) then a injury plauged 04 and a great 2005 campaign in AA Portland. rocketing him up to a high prospect status. he had great strikeout rate that year with a average (but improving) walk rate.

He started the 06 season in AAA Pawtucket. where his periphals all slipped backward despite a good ERA (2.70 ) then he got called up mid season as the Red Sox were locked into a tight race against the Yankees and the wild card. Lester held his own (4.76) and actually had a good record (7-2) but his periphals were now in ugly territory as he posted a WHIP of 1.65 and only a K/9 of 6.6 to back it up (obviously. the higher the WHIP the weaker the K/9 becomes. as the pitcher obviously faced more batter per 9 inning to get those strikeouts) he wasn't doing anything particularly well. his velocity was down compare to the scouting reports (fan graph had him barely over 90mph in 06 with his FB) he's command was shaky, he was fairly hittable. and he wasn't missing many bats. the only good news was that he wasn't getting HR hit against him but the GB rate doesn't back up that stat too well either.

As the Red Sox faded down the stretch. horrible news hit as Lester was diagnosed with a mild form of cancer and had to go into treatment. he survived and was amazingly back in the majors by mid July. from there on he posted a 4-0 record with 4.57 ERA in 11 starts befoer his heroics in the world series.

My question is. his fastball last year still just averaged around 90 (89.9 actually according toe fangraphs). his periphals improved from 06 but not considerablly so (though the HR part caught up to him as he gave up 10 bombs in his 11 start) the # simply don't suggest he'll be a good pitcher at this point. he's only 24. so there's obvious room for improvement. but the question is...

a.will his velocity climb back?

b.will his command return to average level or will he continue to be below average?

because at the moment. we're looking at a pitcher who's not missing a ton of bats. has below average command and is a flyball pitcher. that's clearly not a recepie for success. let alone front rotation pitching. these combinations leave a lot of questions to be answered. and I find the hype to be a little overboard at this point until he proves he could get his command back to managable level and/or regain some stuff. he's never had GOOD command in his professional career. so i'm having trouble seeing him succeed in the Moyer / Buerhle / Glavine mode. Jarrod Washburn / Al Leiter seems like a good comp. but I doubt that's what Boston fans envision in him. (despite both pitcher having dominant years during their career)

Now on to Chief Ellsbury, selected in the 1st round in 05. he moved quickly. never spening a full season at any level. during that span he threw up a combined .313/.389/.425 line before ripping it up late in the season with the big league team.

so what's the problem? well the .112 ISOP is concerning. he hit a combined 10 HR in the minors across in 250 game. that about 1.5 season worth in the majors. and his lowest SLG was in Pawtucket where he slugged a pedestrian .380 (with a .082 ISOP!)

While his power is clearly not in the Juan Pierre territory. he does seem to posses below average power at best. and such type of prospects tend to see their MILB go down in their transition to the majors. particularly if they're not amazingly young for their level (Ellsbury is 24 this season. while young. that's not exactly significantly so) the 44 doubles and 10 triples in that context is also not exaclty high particularly considering that he has obvious blazing speed.

The Red Sox brass seem to suggest he can be a 12-15 HR hitter sometime down the line... I just don't see where he gets that sort of power without significantly altering his game (or taking you-know-what ). he did jack 3 in September for the Sox. but that's a pretty small sample size. looking at hittracker  all 3 HR were pulled though the average distances was quiet decent. so there's some mix signals here.

I think the basic questions going foward is.

a. which way will Ellsbury's power go in the majors? his MILB power number translate to a  5-7 dinger guy in a full season. that's pretty weak . and it's implication is pretty big because most of the time if a guy's power is surpressed so will his OBP. Ellsbury had a very good .389 OBP in the minors. if he could carry that AND steal baess like he should that would be a big asset regardless of the power. but in many cases with great speed / low power prospect we see their average / OBP take a tumble if their power gets surpressed in the majors. Juan Pierre and Joey Gathright are two pretty extreme examples of that. while Ellsbury clearly posses more power than those two. it's still hard to see wether he fall into this catagory.

b. Grady Sizemore? really? first of all. Grady Sizemore was a full time player in the big leagues by the time Ellsbury was drafted. hell Grady Sizemore IS 1 year older than Ellsbury and he's already played 3 full season in his career. Sizemore 's prospecting case is vastly different from Ellsbury, he was a raw talent out of highschool that was very young at each level. just because their minor league lines look somewhat similar (never mind that Sizemore put up those lines from age 17-21 instead of 21-23)  this sort of comparason is just wrong.

personally i can't see how either of these player live up to their hype right now. at least in the shorter term. I could definately see Lester having a couple of great seasons in his career though having a consistently good one is quiet questionable. Ellsbury seems like he'll be pretty solid but by that I mean a .300 /.370/ .410 guy with a lot of steals a good defense .... NOT Grady Sizemore . he doesn't seem like he'll struggle too much to adjust. but  i highly doubt he'll hit more than 12-15 HR as a CEILING. it's hard to read out significantly more than 10 HR average out of his lines. he doesn't have the power in NCAA ( with metal bats!) he doesn't have it in the minors. he doesn't hit a lot of 2B/3B either which suggest he's not exactly a gap power guy either. he's not exactly overly young at any particular level to suggest making further progress later on in his career (ala Miguel Cabrera / Grady Sizemore / Robinson Cano types )

So what am i overlooking here?