Uh-oh, Ellsbury wants to stay

This morning brought the first boot-filled-with-slush, tongue-frozen-to-the-clothesline, car-stuck-in-a-snowbank crapola moment of winter 2017:

An MLB Trade Rumors report says Jacoby Ellsbury does not want to leave the Yankees.

In a J-Lo-endorsing-A-Rod kind of way, this is nice. It's like Joanie loving Chachi. It's heart-warming that Ellsbury wants to stay. He's a fine, upstanding citizen, and you don't want such people badmouthing your franchise, especially when we're perfecting our fan dance in the hope of seducing the Japanese Babe. We don't need players thinking of NYC in the way that, say, Robbie Cano spits on the sidewalk whenever he sees the Space Needle. 

The problem is that "Ells" has the contractual power to zap trades, and no Yankee has been more in need of a new team since the first time Kei Igawa was sent to Tampa for the Billy Connors brain implant. Last year, Ellsbury hit a robust .262 with 7 HRs and 22 stolen bases - pretty much his stats over the last three. (For fans of WAR, his WAR in 2017 stood at 1.7, whatever the fuck that means.) It's not that Ellsbury was bad; he was just vastly overpaid - $21 million for the season - and we have him for three more years - yes, the entirety of Trump's term (although in both cases, I suppose nothing is certain.)

Damn. There is no option here. We must impeach! - wait, TRADE! I meant trade! - we must trade Trum-er-Ellsbury! If Ellsbury stays, Clint Frazier doesn't get 250 MLB at bats between April and July... and before you thunder that Frazier didn't exactly go Hulk-on-Thor in 2017, imagine where the Yankees would be today if Aaron Judge had been jammed up last spring... huh, HUH?...  because Judge certainly didn't blow up the league in his 2016 indoctrination. If Ellsbury stays, Jake Cave rots in Scranton, Billy McKinney might as well take up professional golf and Tyler Austin... aw, forget it. We'd have an outfield of Gardy, Hicks and Judge, with Ellsbury's $21 million butt on the bench. And if we do sign the Japanese George Herman, Ells wouldn't even get to DH. We'd get the same production from Mason Williams, and that's not just a whiff of classical gas.

Listen: The problem with a newly recharged farm system is that you must use it. At some point, you either put faith in youth - Sanchez, Judge, Bird and Severino all needed early adjustments to MLB - or the pipeline gets clogged, and your toilets don't flush. For nearly two years now, since A-Rod was escorted to the service exit, the Empire has pushed the "Baby Bombers" movement. Clint Frazier is next in line. He needs the first half of 2018 - not August through September - to show what he's got. We invested a shitload in Frazier - Andrew Miller, no less - and he still carries a solid pedigree. Maybe he'll flop. Who knows? But we simply must see what he's got - sooner, not later. It's the same with Cave and the others, though on a far lesser scale. It's Frazier that matters, and he matters far more than wrangling another 1.7 WAR - whatever that is - out of Ellsbury.

The Yankees biggest chess move this winter is what to do with Ellsbury. We can't just release him. He's got value. Hal Steinbrenner needs to cut a Harvey Weinstein-sized appeasement check, pay a massive chunk of his salary and trade Ellsbury to a city with hipsters and maybe a Space Needle. Whatever. It's nice that he wants to stay a Yankee. Unfortunately, he didn't hit well enough. Let's just say he's a victim of WAR, whatever that means.