Against all odds, Jacoby Ellsbury has rejoined the New York Yankees near the end of spring training. The long-lost outfielder spoke to reporters on Monday to give an update on his rehab.
Bigfoot, aliens, Brett Gardner’s hair, and Jacoby Ellsbury in the year 2019. All are items you always had a feeling still existed yet you just couldn’t prove it for sure. The whereabouts of these four things used to be one of the universe’s greatest mysteries.
One of those mysteries has been solved.
Jacoby Ellsbury has reported to spring training with the New York Yankees and officially joins the team for the first time in what feels like about 82 years.
The long-lost outfielder spoke to reporters to update fans in his progress. He discussed exactly how close he is to rejoining the team for the 2019 campaign and by all indications, it’s not very close at all.
Jacoby Ellsbury says he’s doing baseball activity, hopes to be back as soon as possible. Said it wasn’t easy when asked what it was like emotionally to not play a game in a whole year. #Yankees
— Brendan Kuty (@BrendanKutyNJ) March 18, 2019
Ellsbury said he has no timetable for a return but said he’s headed “in the right direction.”
— Erik Boland (@eboland11) March 18, 2019
So while Ellsbury is technically back with the team, he’s not particularly close to trotting out to center field at Yankee Stadium.
But the fact that he’s in camp and working out at all is a good sign.
It still remains to be shown if Ellsbury can be a valuable contributor for this team going forward. Even when he was healthy, Joe Girardi elected to go with Aaron Hicks as the starting centerfielder anyway, making Ellsbury a wildly overpaid bench player.
He probably doesn’t have an established place on this team going forward but who knows. Last year, Shane Robinson played a heck of a lot of games so we can’t count Jacoby Ellsbury out just yet.
