Right time to say goodbye
Bradley Jr. inks 2-year deal with Milwaukee
It was time to say goodbye. Almost 10 years since Jackie Bradley Jr. was drafted 40th overall out of the University of South Carolina in 2011, the Red Sox are saying farewell.
Bradley will be joining the Milwaukee Brewers on a two-year, $24-million deal that allows him to opt out after this season. The deal was first reported by the Globe on Thursday morning.
Goodbyes are hard, even when it’s clear it’s the right time for both parties to bid each other adieu.
The time has come in Boston, where the Red Sox have an exciting young center fielder, Jarren Duran, who is being compared to Grady Sizemore while he smacks homers, steals bases and chases fly balls in center. They have Alex Verdugo, who they acquired for Mookie Betts and can play anywhere in the outfield with charisma, energy and athleticism. They have Kiké Hernandez, a super utility man who will get some time in center this year.
The team has options. They’re younger and cheaper than Bradley, and that’s where the organization has been headed for the last two years.
One thing is certain: whoever replaces him won’t be as talented as Bradley on defense. They might never be as kind as he was to others inside the Red Sox organization, or as generous as he was with his time to the less fortunate in the Boston area. Just last April, he and his wife, Erin, made another donation to the Boston Healthcare for the Homeless, where they had contributed through the years.
They’re part of the city here. The Red Sox call them family.
But even the most exciting and lovable players reach a point in their careers where they’re no longer a match for their current franchise.
The Red Sox considered Bradley, who turns 31 in April, for another season. But they didn’t have much financial flexibility underneath the luxury tax threshold and they preferred to bring him back on a oneyear deal, according to a source familiar with the team’s thinking. When it became clear Bradley might not sign until late in the offseason — he was among the final big-name free agents to find a contract — they chose to move forward with other opportunities.
They also wanted to make room for Duran, the former seventhround pick who had a strong showing in the Caribbean Series this winter and looks bigger and stronger than ever before.
It was just one year ago that Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Bloom made the decision to bring back Bradley for the 2020 season. There was speculation around the game that he would be nontendered. Coming off a season in which he hit just .235 with a .738 OPS and some defensive metrics indicated he wasn’t as good at center field as he used to be, it wasn’t certain that Bradley was worth the money he’d earn in his final year of arbitration.
But Bloom had quickly grown to appreciate him, both the player and the person, and the two sides agreed on an $11 million salary for 2020. In a shortened season, he hit .283 with an .814 OPS, though he was not a Gold Glove finalist in center field.
“I just don’t understand, and I have yet to have anyone from any analytics department explain to me how they ‘calculate’ the ‘numbers’ or better yet how can you physically improve on them as a player,” Bradley said on Twitter after getting snubbed.
One thing has always been true of Bradley: he’s one of those players who is either painfully underrated or vastly overrated, depending on the source.
He felt underrated when the Red Sox sent him back-and-forth to the minor leagues in three straight years from 2013 through ’15.
And he might’ve been overrated when he posted a 29-game hitting streak in which he hit .446 with 1.441 OPS in 2016.
“I never lost confidence,” he said at the time. “Never. I wouldn’t know how tough it would be to regain. I just knew that I was going to continue to work, and that’s the one thing that I could do.”
Said Mookie Betts, “A lot of people doubted him from the beginning. I just enjoy watching him prove everyone wrong. He can hit. He can play center field. He can play the game.”
He was less effective at the plate from ’17 through ’19, ranking below average in most offensive statistics, though he did win his first and only Gold Glove in ‘18. He also earned MVP honors in the American League Championship Series vs. the Astros, perhaps the highlight of his career.
There’s no organization that understood Bradley’s value better than the Red Sox. It’s why they never traded him last summer, even when it was clear the team was going nowhere and they’d get nothing if they let Bradley walk to free agency before getting dealt. They fielded offers around the league, but they felt like they valued him more than any of the teams they talked with.
So they kept him. He played out the string on the worst Red Sox team since 1965. And on Thursday the team said goodbye to perhaps the greatest defensive center fielder in Red Sox history.
“It was a pleasure to have him in the clubhouse, to know him off the field, and to know his family,” manager Alex Cora said. “He’s an outstanding kid.”
It was time. But that doesn’t make it any easier.