JBJ COULD BE FIELDING OFFERS
CF says Sox haven’t offered contract extension, expects to test free agency
Jackie Bradley Jr. said Wednesday that he hasn’t heard anything from the Red Sox about a contract extension and is expecting to test free agency after the 2020 season.
“I made it this far, might as well become a free agent,” Bradley said.
The defensive star has been a hot conversation topic this week, after most of the Sox’ pending free agents were dealt before Monday’s trade deadline. But Bradley wasn’t, with the Sox choosing to hang onto him despite having more losses than any team in MLB and Bradley set to hit the market after the playoffs.
Chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom hinted that Bradley might be a candidate for a contract extension, saying Monday, “We love Jackie… I’ve still come to regard him so highly and see what an incredible person he is. We know he’s a good player. We’d love to have him here for a long time. That was the case months ago, it was the case yesterday, the case today, the case tomorrow. I don’t think there’s anything to read into that today, but that shouldn’t be news, it’s how we’ve always felt about Jackie.”
It was news to Bradley, who said he hasn’t heard anything from the Red Sox about wanting him in Boston for a long time.
“I think that’s just something they communicated with (the media) at this point,” Bradley said. “I’ll be a free agent in a couple weeks. That’s the cool thing about free agency, you get to weigh out your options.”
Bradley said the trade deadline wasn’t stressful.
“Either you get traded or you don’t,” he said.
It doesn’t help that he’s making a prorated portion of a sizable $11 million salary in his final year of arbitration. There was some thought in the industry that the Sox would non-tender Bradley to save money last offseason, but Bloom felt strongly enough to commit a large salary to his center fielder.
It hasn’t panned out, with Bradley hitting just .248 with a .669 OPS heading into Wednesday.
“This year has been a different year,” Bradley said. “So you’re not really sure how things are going to be evaluated in the first place. You just want to go out there and do what you can, help your team and let the chips fall where they may. It’s a shortened season so a lot of things can happen in a shortened season.”
With the pandemic causing baseball games to be played without fans this year, and adding uncertainty to the 2021 season, it could be a tough time for free agents.
Another interesting factor: Fenway Park’s dimensions.
The Red Sox have long created their own defensive metrics to evaluate a players’ ability in the field because they don’t trust those that are public. Fenway’s tricky dimensions make it difficult for a center fielder to maximize his range factor or perhaps other defensive metrics.
Bradley has been considered one of the best in the game on defense, but the SABR Defensive Index ranked him 14th out of 15 American League center fielders last year.
“I think (I’ll be) more valuable at a park with a different configuration, just because of the way the layout of the park is, especially in left-center,” Bradley said. “I know there are balls that I would be able to catch that I can’t catch. With the old way of grading, they don’t factor that in. They just factor in sections and the distance that balls expected would have been.”
Off the field, Bradley said he’s felt supported in Boston, particularly as he’s chosen to take a knee for the Black Lives Matter movement and wanted to sit out a game last Thursday to protest the Jacob Blake shooting.
“I received a tremendous amount of support from staff, organization, teammates. It was special to see,” he said. “I told them at the beginning, ‘Please do not stop playing the game because of my personal decision that I wanted to make. I want y’all to play this game and this is something that y’all love and it’s what you want to do. Do not, I guess, react to something that I wanted to do.’ With that, they showed tremendous support for me and it means a lot.”
The Red Sox have made the playoffs in four of the eight seasons Bradley has been on the roster. This year has been a disaster, with the team 12-24 entering Wednesday.
“How am I coping with losing? I don’t enjoy losing,” Bradley said. “It’s not something that I will ever be accustomed to. It’s trying. But you’ve got to go through some things. You go through adversity and hopefully you learn something from it.”