What's Worse, Losing Damon, or Ellsbury?

This is a really easy question.

I was actually surprised to learn that we (well, Jed Hoyer, at least) were willing to go to 3 years with Damon. Because at the same time we were wondering where in hell he'd play the third year. There was a strong fear he wouldn't be able to play CF by then ... and LF and DH were sort of spoken for.

As it turns out, he was only able to play a good CF for one more year, so letting him walk prevented a migraine of a problem.

I'd say Ellsbury is a tougher loss in one sense because he's more likely to help the Yankees in that he can stay in CF longer than Damon could and if Damon couldn't stay in CF and had to play a corner that would diminish his value. Ellsbury is likely to stay in CF for quite awhile and should even hit some HRs in Yankee Stadium.

In another sense, it was tougher to lose Damon, because I never bought that Crisp could adequately replace him, although defensively Crisp was great, but I do believe that Bradley in time will be a good replacement for Ellsbury. He won't have Ells' speed - I'll miss the thought that every time Ellsbury got on I expected him to steal - and he was a great high % basestealer.

I do like Bradley's plate approach and I do think he'll hit 15 to maybe even 20 homers per year and I think he'll be excellent defensively, too.

Damon. The Yankees were already a playoff team at the time, which they are not at the moment. The Red Sox were coming off a season that saw them swept out of the playoffs in the ALDS as the wild card entry. Adding Damon and keeping him away from Boston widen the gap and played a big part in the Red Sox missing the playoffs in 2006. Well, that and the parade of pitching injuries. To top it all off, the Red Sox did not have an in-house replacement for Damon. Bradley is one of their top prospects and is slated to take over in CF this season.

In terms of the contract, Damon played out his contract with the Yankees and then continued playing in the majors, suggesting that the Red Sox could have rolled the dice on the four year deal and been alright. If Ellsbury lands another contract after this, it would be absolutely stunning. The loss of Damon hurt more, both on the field and logically, and it's hard for me to envision a scenario where Ellsbury performs so well that he changes that perception.

He was primarily a LF and DH by the second year of that new contract, and completely unable to play CF by the third year. We had Manny Ramirez in LF and David Ortiz at DH. Far from alright, we would have been utterly screwed.

He also had a 3.35 WAR (b and f averaged) in his last year, and his replacement averaged 1.9 over three years. Unless Bradley averages 4.35 over the next three years, this will represent a bigger downgrade from the departing player's final season (5.8).