Bradley fights losing bat-tle at plate

Maybe more than any other position player, Jackie Bradley Jr. provided the Red Sox with a lot of excitement coming into the season. It hasn’t panned out. Bradley entered last night with a .218 average and .697 OPS, his worst numbers since his rookie year in 2014.

“Obviously he’s regressing since the All-Star break,” Red Sox manager Alex Cora said. “It’s one of those that sometimes, it’s hard to get the moves. I don’t get into the conversations but everybody knows when he’s hitting the ball the other way he becomes very dangerous and when he’s pulling the ball on the ground, it’s the other way around.” What happened?

Last year’s American League Championship Series MVP when he homered twice and drove in nine runs, Bradley’s progress began early in the second half. After the All-Star break in 2018, he hit .269 with an .827 OPS over an extended stretch without any long slumps getting in the way.

It was remarkable consistency for somebody who hasn’t shown much during his promising career.

But Bradley spent the offseason working with the launch-angle-focused hitting coaches who helped turn around J.D. Martinez’ career, and it may have backfired.

“I think talking to J.D., sometimes you go from one extreme to the other and you have to get back to the middle,” Cora said. “It’s fine-tuning. You’ve got to be careful where you go, because then you have to go back, and sometimes it takes a while to go from that end to where we want to go.”

Cora said Bradley’s poor season isn’t for a lack of effort. The work in the batting cage with the Red Sox’ hitting coaches is evident. But the results haven’t been there.

Would the Red Sox prefer the old version of Bradley’s offensive approach?

“Honestly, I do feel like what he was doing a month ago, a month and a half ago, it wasn’t that much different than right now,” Cora said. “But sometimes it’s his pitch selection or just being on time. Manny Ramirez used to say it, ‘You can work on all you want, mechanics-wise, it doesn’t matter. But if you are not on time and don’t see the baseball, it’s going to be hard to hit.’”

Bradley’s 33 percent fly ball rate is actually among the lowest of his career and his launch angle is down from 12 degrees to 8 degrees. He’s simply not making hard contact consistently, with an exit velocity that ranks in the 40th percentile.

“He probably gets out of whack a bit mechanically,” Cora said. “He’s probably a little late with his foot, with his load, with his trigger. You rush yourself into certain pitches and you end up rolling over. That’s something we work every day.

“Hopefully we can fix it or something clicks right away tonight with one pitch. It’s always one pitch with Jackie. It’s a fastball away, or a changeup up, he hits it off the wall and then he gets rolling.”