For the defense — I think Ellsbury’s terrific catch the other day is actually a demonstration of how much he has to learn. It was a terrific catch, no argument, but the reason he had to make a terrific catch, instead of a merely good one, is that first, he wasn’t in great position in the first place and had to go a long way, and second, he misjudged the wall (there’s no warning track in that stadium, so it’s understandable, but nevertheless it was a misjudgement). What we saw last year with Crisp was not only the spectacular catches like Ellsbury’s, but more importantly everything that even came close was gobbled up, often making it look routine.

Ellsbury is athletic enough that he can make up for his rookie misjudgements a lot of the time, but I think Crisp is still much better defensively.

Offensively, the Ellsbury we saw last fall was a lucky, lucky, kid on a hot streak. He turned a lot of soft nubbers into base hits, and he didn’t have all that many really hard-hit, convincing hits. Credit to him for using his speed, but you can’t rely on getting on base from soft infield hits on a long-term basis. Several of those could easily have been taken away from him and he’d be left with a pedestrian (Crisp-like) average.

On the other hand, at this moment it does look as if he has more potential than Crisp. I think this year Crisp and Ellsbury would be a wash — or Crisp will be better. But Ellsbury is ready for the majors, and it looks like once he gets seasoning here he will be better than Crisp, next year or the year after. The Sox are in this for the long run. I think having Ellsbury up this year doesn’t significantly hurt the Sox’ chances this year, and improves their chances over the next couple years.