Ellsbury uncertain for Tuesday

The Red Sox will not know until tomorrow if Jacoby Ellsbury will be in the lineup for Tuesday’s series opener against the New York Yankees. Ellsbury left the game after the fifth inning with a strained right shoulder.

Ellsbury jammed his shoulder sliding awkwardly into second base in the third inning, and he aggravated it twice – once making a tremendous, stumbling catch in the triangle, and again when he swung during an at-bat in the fifth.

“I banged it up a little on the slide, and then I tried to fight through it,” Ellsbury said. “When I made the catch, I landed on my right shoulder and made it even worse than that. It’s really not feeling too good right now, but we have the off day to get it looked at.”

The specific injury is a sprain to the AC joint in his right shoulder. Manager Terry Francona called Ellsbury’s shoulder “tender,” and Ellsbury said it was “throbbing” after the game.

“There was a sharp pain in there when I originally did it,” Ellsbury said. “When I went back into the field, I was hoping it would kind of wear off, just be one of those that went away. Unfortunately, I landed on it again and kind of made it worse.”

Ellsbury considered coming out of the game after the slide, but stayed in and exacerbated the injury.

“I always try to stay in the game,” Ellsbury said. “But if I stayed in the game, it would be one of those things that would maybe make it worse than something that’s maybe a day or two, make it something longer, maybe a couple weeks. It was definitely the right decision, coming out of the game. Hopefully, it’s just something that I wake up – I’m sure it’s going to be sore tomorrow, but we’ll see on Tuesday.”

Structurally, Francona said, Ellsbury is OK, but the pain and soreness may hold him out against the Yankees Tuesday. Ellsbury’s gut feeling for Tuesday?

“I don’t know,” he said. “The first step is get it looked at, see what the diagnosis is, and go from there. Hopefully, being optimistic, I’ll be in the lineup for Tuesday. But we’ll see.”