The Baseball Reporters Show Recap 7/12

Tony Massarotti digs deeper into this Jacoby Ellsbury matter by suggesting he's always had this reputation of being high maintenance. Also, Tony found a very revealing Terry Francona quote from 2 years ago about the injured star.

Tony doesn't see this Jacoby Ellsbury thing going away, especially after Kevin Youkilis's comments highlighted the sentiment of the clubhouse. Tony thinks this issue is more than just the rib injury, and suggests Ellsbury's reputation has a lot to do with it.

Tony on Jacoby Ellsbury's injury, "What we are learning more and more is that his [Ellsbury] reputation in that clubhouse has taken something of a beating. This only validates the point that this rib issue really isn't the story with Jacoby Ellsbury and the Red Sox. It's not. One incident like this should not have caused the reaction it has among team officials, and teammates more importantly. With Ellsbury, this has been sitting there under the surface for sometime. He had a reputation before this thing happened with his ribs. Think back a couple of years ago back in 2008 when Josh Beckett had his elbow issue. The Red Sox bent over backwards for Beckett because he was really concerned about his elbow. They didn't do this with Ellsbury. That tells me, somewhere along the line here, that the Red Sox started to deem a lot of Jacoby Ellsbury's concerns as frivolous."

Tony maintains that a player receiving treatment on his own accord away from the team, say in Arizona for instance, is highly unusual. Mazz doesn't think Jacoby did himself any favors by saying what he said to the media this past weekend. Which brought him to a very interesting Terry Francona snippet from 2 years ago. "We can still win when you're not 100%. Sometimes you go out and take an oafer for the team and we can still win. I'm not pointing a finger at Ellsbury because I think he's a pretty tough kid. I guess my point is you're not going to always be 100%. I don't know that we can wait for guys to be 100% or we can never field a team."

It's  Tony's opinion that the young guys on the team need to provide the stability of playing everyday because they're usually the healthier ones. And when a 25 year old cannot provide your team with a little durability it's certainly frustrating.

The Red Sox look to get healthy over this All-Star break as they take some much needed time off. Not David Ortiz though. He will be competing in the State Farm Home-Run Derby tonight on Fox.