Top of the morning to you, readers.

While we were gone, planning lessons for 90 fifth graders (The Sports Chick’s a teacher, in case you didn’t know….if only blogging paid bills!), Jacoby Ellsbury did something quick.

In fact, by stealing his fifty fifth base of the season, he set a single season record for the storied Boston Red Sox franchise.

Ellsbury, who is also the MLB’s only Native American ballplayer, is probably the second fastest player in baseball right now.  Carl Crawford of the Rays, who currently has 54.  He’s the player who will probably at some point hit the century mark: a hundred stolen bases in a season.  However, Crawford plays for the Rays, which in our mind gives Ellsbury a chance to pass him up.  Here’s why:

1. The Rays don’t win. OK, this isn’t exactly true anymore.  The Rays do win, and even made it to the World Series in 2008, where they promptly got swept by the Phillies.  However, ugly World Series play aside, this is a team with some serious potential.  The problem is just that they don’t consistently have the kind of performance that can lead to padded base stats–those eighth inning stolen bases in blowouts that nobody on the opposing team minds, for example.

2. They’re in the wrong division. Ellsbury, at least as long as he plays for the Red Sox, will get chances to steal bases in the playoffs.  The Rays, even though they’re now pretty good, are not good enough to contend in the stacked AL East.  If they’d moved to Vegas, as was the scuttlebutt a couple of years ago, and were in a different division, this would be a different story, but assuming Crawford stays in TB, Ellsbury’s likely to play significantly more games.

Congrats to Jacoby…keep it up and the Sox might even have a prayer at the playoffs….but we really still don’t think so.