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By Cameron Martin | Red Sox
April 23rd, 2008 |
Jacoby Ellsbury is quickly (and quietly) approaching a Major League Baseball record held by future Hall of Famer Tim Raines. At the start of his career (1979-1981), Raines was successful on his first 27 steal attempts, the longest such streak at the start of a player’s career, according to stats provided by Sean Forman and the geniuses at Baseball-Reference.com. Ellsbury, who swiped 9 bases without being caught last season, hasn’t been caught in 8 attempts this year (including 6 in the last week), putting him at 17 straight to start his career. I know, I know, ladies love the long ball, but just imagine the excitement and anticipation as Ellsbury gets closer to the record. Every time he gets on base, the stadium — Fenway, at least — will buzz with excitement.
A streak like this is different from any other. Ellsbury, right now, is running around like a virgin. Once he’s caught, that’s that: He’s lost his virginity and there’s no regaining it in respect to this record.
Ellsbury is a rather fast mammal, but he has been captured on the base paths in the last few years. Last season at Pawtucket he was caught stealing six times. For the year, he was 33 of 39, or 84.6 percent – which just happens to be Tim Raines’s career stolen base percentage. Sure, I fudged it a bit: Raines’s stolen base percentage was 84.69, and rounds up to 84.7, while 33 of 39 works out to 84.615. But only 24.3 percent of baseball experts considered Tim Raines worthy of the Hall of Fame last year, so go bother them. While you’re there, ask them if they know which catcher was the first to throw out Tim Raines in his career. If they look at you quizzically, ask them to name the current manager of the Angels, ’cause it’s the same guy.
In the interests of full disclosure, Stephen Drew of the Diamondbacks should be mentioned in this article about Raines and Ellsbury, since J.D.’s younger brother has started off his career with 12 successful steals over 3 seasons (229 games). At that pace, he’ll reach Raines sometime next June, so feel free to follow that developing story. Meanwhile, I’m going to follow Ellsbury, since he’s the new Red Sox rock star. No kidding, I was at Fenway last night when he hit two bombs (including a leadoff homer) and old ladies were throwing panties at him like he’s Tom Jones. Somebody told me he has a steady girlfriend. If so, he’s a fool.
I’m kidding (sort of).
If I were the least bit superstitious, I might have had second thoughts about writing this article, which opens me up to the criticism of morons, who love curses and love blaming others for “jinxing it.” But Ellsbury isn’t perfect on the base paths because he’s lucky. He hasn’t been caught in the majors because he’s fast and (so far, anyway) good at picking his spots. One of these days the streak will end, though. He’ll get gunned down by a catcher or hosed by Angel Hernandez. Or maybe he’ll get picked off by Andy Pettitte’s patented balk maneuver, which would make some kind of sick cosmic sense. In the meantime, I’m going to start a pool. I’m going to propose something over at my other job, Bugs & Cranks. I going to suggest we do a lottery and assign Major League catchers to all of our baseball writers (I think there’s 30 of us). These catchers will be from the teams that Jacoby Ellsbury is going to face this season, and the winner, of course, will be the writer whose catcher puts the first CS in Ellsbury’s career ledger. Perhaps Tim Raines’s record doesn’t need more publicity, since everyone’s talking about it already. But I like to gamble, and wagering on a pristine stolen base record makes for good theater.
Cam Martin is a Sox fan who lives in Yankee country (Fairfield County, CT). He also covers baseball for Bugs&Cranks. E-mail: cdavidmartin@yahoo.com
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6 Responses to “Ellsbury quickly (and quietly) approaches Major League Baseball record”
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April 24th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Hosed by Angel Hernandez seems the most likely thing to happen.
April 25th, 2008 at 6:46 am
Great site. Tim Raines! What a player. I actually saw him play when I was growing up in Montreal. But I am a die hard Boston Everything Fan. Ellesbury is going to be a great one if Scott Boros doesn’t get greedy.
April 25th, 2008 at 8:11 am
You only need 29 writers, I doubt a Red Sox catcher will throw out Ellsbury.
April 25th, 2008 at 8:43 am
Math, you’re indeed right. The 30 referred simply to the number of writers (I think) we have at Bugs & Cranks. Ellsbury and the Sox don’t even play 29 teams this year, When I wrote it, I was picturing the possible assigning of backup catchers to respective writers as well, like Moeller or Molina with the Yankees, since the Sox only play 13 AL teams and maybe a handful of NL teams, so not every writer/gambler would even get a starting catcher. Sorry for the confusion, I should have expanded on that.
April 27th, 2008 at 10:05 am
What an interesting stat! I have friends at ESPN who will be duly impressed - very cool. I work for the official artist of the Red Sox, Mark Waitkus - take a look at his work when you get a chance: http://www.markwaitkus.com - I’m going to email this article to him, he’ll get a real kick out of it!
May 15th, 2008 at 8:00 am
Its getting closer..
Also thanks to this article, I knew the answer when someone called WEEI the other day and asked what the record was.