We’ve jumped the gun on Jackie Bradley Jr. before. And if we didn’t, all of New England did.
The fans. The media. The Boston Red Sox players.
“He’s going to be good,” Dustin Pedroia told Peter Abraham of the Boston Globe in 2013, just before Opening Day. “I mean, he is now.”
This, from Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy, appeared days later: “Monday, the torch will be passed to Boston’s baseball future, and its name is Jackie Bradley Jr.”
The Monday in question was Opening Day, which was also the day Bradley played in his first major league game—and two weeks before Bradley and his .097 batting average were passed on to become part of Pawtucket’s Triple-A future.
So, yeah, we jumped the gun on Bradley based on one good spring training, and we maybe did it again after that season when the Red Sox decided their center field future would be better with him than with Jacoby Ellsbury.
The problem with jumping the gun isn’t so much that you look bad when the guy turns out not to have been ready. The problem is that when he is ready, you’re not sure whether to believe it.
He’s ready now—believe it. And the Red Sox are better off with him than with Ellsbury.
“This is as good as I’ve ever seen him,” said one National League scout who just finished watching the Red Sox. “In the past, he’s looked out of sync. Now he seems to have gotten the rhythm between his upper and lower body in sync. He seems to be seeing the ball better.
“And he’s aggressive early in counts.”
We’re talking small sample size, for sure, but we’re also talking about a development that has been coming on. Bradley wasn’t prepared to hit big league pitching consistently in 2013 or 2014, as it turned out. He struggled at the plate in his first opportunities in Boston in 2015, too.
But he was a different guy when he began playing regularly during the second half of 2015, and he’s that same different guy now. Maybe even a better guy, because over the last three weeks, his 1.211 OPS is the best in baseball.
Hitting streaks are fun but often overrated. In the 21-game hitting streak Bradley carried into Monday night’s game in Kansas City, though, he had a .443 on-base percentage with a .768 slugging percentage. Nearly half his hits (15 of his 33) went for extra bases.
“Even though those power numbers are coming now, it’s not because of an all-or-nothing approach,” Red Sox manager John Farrell told reporters, including Brendan C. Hall of ESPN.com. “He’s picking out some counts, he’s getting some pitches up and he’s driving the baseball.”
Put it together with his still-sparkling defense in center field, and you have the player we got so excited about three years ago. One big reason to believe in what Bradley is doing now is that this is what his early minor league numbers and his draft position and prospect standing suggested he could do.
It took him a while to figure things out at the top level, for sure. He stayed around because of that defensive ability, which was elite then and remains so. Steve Buckley of the Boston Herald admitted that he wrote in 2014 he’d take a .250 batting average from Bradley just to get his glove in the lineup.
Bradley wasn’t hitting .250 then (he finished 2014 at .198). He’s not hitting .250 now (he was at .331 through the weekend).
He’s 26 years old now, and he still may not be Boston’s baseball future. But in a Red Sox lineup that is leading the majors in scoring, he’s a catalyst and a star.
“I think it was just a matter of time,” Bradley told Abraham when he started hitting. “Everybody kind of moves at their own speed. All I could constantly do was just work. No need to get mad or upset. Just try and get better.”
He’s better now—a lot better. It doesn’t feel like jumping the gun this time, even if it’s always dangerous to judge a player while he’s hotter than he’s ever been.
This time, it feels real.
Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.
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