Casey has a pointer for Red Sox

By Kerry Eggers

The Portland Tribune, Dec 27, 2005, Updated Oct 30, 2009

Former Oregon State star Jacoby Ellsbury, with one season of pro baseball under his belt, probably will play for either Class A Wilmington (N.C.) or Double-A Portland (Maine) next season.

But with Johnny Damon now a New York Yankee, OSU coach Pat Casey suggests a radical move.

“If I were the Red Sox, I’d take Jacoby to (major league) training camp in February,” Casey says. “If he’d get 50 at-bats during spring training, they’d find he is a lot closer to being big-league ready than they thought. He’d probably hit .250 and steal some bases and play well defensively and they’d go, ‘Wow.’ ”

Ellsbury, 21, hit .317 with a .418 on-base percentage in 35 games for the Lowell (Mass.) Spinners this year, after leading OSU to the Pac-10 title and the College World Series. The center fielder from Madras missed 14 games with a hamstring injury but led the New York-Penn short-season A League team in stolen bases with 23. He was second on the team in hitting and on-base percentage, behind ex-Stanford infielder Jed Lowrie.

“You always feel like you can play better, but I was pleased with how it went,” says Ellsbury, who was drafted by Boston with the 23rd pick in the first round. “I was pretty solid defensively. There wasn’t much of a transition to make from the college game.”

• Sometimes patience in a coaching staff pays off.

It did at Oregon with Rich Brooks, who had losing seasons seven of his first 10 years before turning the program around. And it’s worked that way with the NHL Nashville Predators, who endured five consecutive losing seasons under coach Barry Trotz.

Trotz and his coaching staff, including former Winter Hawk coach Brent Peterson, were rumored more than once to be out the door. But the Predators sneaked into the playoffs as the last team in the Western Conference during the last NHL season, 2003-04. And this season, they have emerged as one of the top teams in the league.

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