Is Coco 'crisp' enough?

While one of the major themes surrounding this year's Boston Red Sox team is going to be 'continuity,' with virtually every member of the team back to quest for a third title in five years, there will be some spring training battles that will determine who gets to do what.

There'll be a struggle to determine the team's fifth starter (Jon Lester or Clay Buchholz), which I touched on previously and there'll be an even more striking struggle out at center field as management works at a decision between Coco Crisp and the new kid on the block, Jacoby Ellsbury.

There are pros and cons on each side of the equation. On the surface, Crisp has the experience; 6 major league seasons, four with the Indians and the last two, with the Sox. On the Ellsbury side, you have a rookie who batted .353 playing in about 20% of last year's games. Then, too, he did bat .438 in the World Series (.360 overall in the post-season).

Still, while there's a tendency to want to jump on the hot rookie bandwagon, I suspect that we all (like management) should take a closer look at what the two have to offer, at the plate and particulary in center field, which is a tricky position at Fenway Park.

Crisp has never been an overpowering batter. He's at .280 lifetime with two seasons ('04 & '05 with the Indians) when he batted .297 and .300, respectively. His average took something of a nose dive in '06, his first year with the Sox, when he went down to .264 and stayed pretty steady last year (.268). He caught some justifiable flack when he went 6-for-33 in the post season (.182), including his 1-for-2 perfomance in 3 of the World Series games.

On the other hand, in his 6 years as a Major Leaguer, he has never recorded a fielding percentage below .985. He's committed a grand total of 11 errors in those 6 years, nine of them in his last two seasons with the Indians. Now, I'll grant you, center field isn't much of an error-prone position, although it's more so in Fenway. All you really need to do is catch the ball, right? But he had 7 assists last year (a career high), which suggests that he did a pretty good job with throwing the caught ball when circumstances called for it.

I'm thinking that one should approach benching him in favor of Ellsbury very cautiously. I've heard "unless they trade him" a few times in reports and it concerns me.

Besides, if Coco doesn't have the quirkiest batting stance in baseball, with that chin of his tucked forcibly into his shoulder, I don't know who does. And we'd miss that, wouldn't we? Don't we all love to point it out to someone unfamiliar with the team (and him)? Certainly not a reason to hold onto a player who's outlived his usefulness, but I'm not convinced that's the case with Coco.

I hereby institute a "Keep Coco" campaign. Keep those cards and letters coming in.