A lot of people were wrong about Jackie Bradley Jr. and I was one of them.
Red Sox Nation counted him out. We wrote him off. We told him he wouldn’t cut it here. I’m just glad he didn’t listen.
Bradley, who has been regarded as one of the best defensive center fielders in Major League Baseball since he was drafted in 2011, has finally found his bat. In 2012, SoxProspects.com said, “A natural centerfielder, Bradley’s defensive ability is his biggest strength. Extremely natural and fluid when tracking flyballs, he gets excellent reads off the bat.”
There was never any doubt that he was a major-league caliber centerfielder. There has, however, been plenty of doubt about what he could do with the bat, but that doubt has vanished in recent weeks. The 26-year-old is now riding a 26-game hit streak, the longest in the Red Sox organization since David Ortiz (27 games) in 2012-13.
At first, it was easy to brush Bradley’s latest success off as a stroke of luck. After all, he has done this before.
Appearing in 37 games in 2013, Bradley hit just .189. Things didn’t get much better the next year as he finished the season hitting .198 after playing in 127 games with the Sox. He was the primary centerfielder, spending just 14 games with Pawtucket.
He was effectively written off by Red Sox Nation and members of the media, like Dennis Eckersley, who was calling him out on NESN game broadcasts. Many people will tell you now that they always knew JBJ would come around but it would be hard for me to believe them. Bradley was tossed into obscurity by Boston fans. He was even sent back to the minors on May 22, 2015, after nearly 170 games in the bigs.
And then August of last year came. Again given a shot at a consistent, everyday job with the big-league club, Bradley tore the cover off the ball in 23 August starts. He hit .354, a one-month career high, and drove in 23 runs. It looked strikingly similar to what he’s doing now. Bradley is hitting .342 this season, and .424 in May with 20 RBI and seven home runs. He has eight home runs total and 33 RBI.
Bradley’s temporary stroke of greatness last season gave fans, and the guys upstairs, a little bit of hope for the 2011 supplemental first-round pick. Of course, he eventually cooled off, which he could do again soon, hit .216 in September and October and finished the season at .249.
This season’s success is doing more than giving fans hope, though. It’s sending the message loud and clear: Jackie Bradley Jr. has arrived. And he’s not going anywhere.
It’s time to give Dustin Pedroia a raise, a statue on Yawkey Way, a spot in the front office or a better parking spot. I don’t care what it is, he just needs to be rewarded for his contributions to this organization, on and off the field.
The four-time All-Star has earned his keep in my book and the legend of the 5-foot-8 second baseman continues to grow. Recently, while Pedroia was watching film of himself, he came across some old at-bats against David Price, Boston’s shiny new ace who has pitched for Tampa Bay, Detroit and Toronto over the last eight years, teams the Sox all meet regularly. Pedroia noticed that Price, who was struggling at the time with a 6.75 ERA, was using a significantly different delivery this season than the one he’d used to strike out Pedroia 11 times in 55 at-bats.
He alerted Price, who was excited about the discovery and began to work on making the proper adjustments. Pedroia, the 2008 AL MVP and four-time Gold Glove winner, brushed off the significance of his advice and told reporters on May 8, “It’s not like it’s a big deal or anything.”
The 10-year veteran may not think it’s a big deal but there’s a few reasons I disagree. First of all, how in the world did the coaching staff – the same guys responsible for managing the third-most expensive roster in baseball – whiff on that discovery? Carl Willis’s job as pitching coach is to do exactly what Pedroia did. He’s responsible for watching film and knowing when the man the Red Sox paid $217 million this offseason is doing something different than what made him worth $217 million.
Second, this is not the first time Pedroia has helped one of his teammates make adjustments.
On a flight to Boston in May 2015, he sat with then-teammate Mike Napoli, who was hitting an abysmal .162 at the time. The pair watched film of the first baseman’s swing, and according to an article written days after the flight, Pedroia noticed that Napoli’s positioning had changed slightly from the year before, throwing off his swing.
Surprise, surprise, the advice Pedroia gave to Napoli paid off. After having just two multi-hit games in April 2015, the 10-year veteran posted five multi-hit efforts in his next eight starts, hitting five home runs in that same span with 11 RBI. He had just three home runs and 11 RBI over his previous 33 games.
And now, Price is benefiting from similar advice. After allowing 31 earned runs on 45 hits over his first seven starts, the 2012 Cy Young winner has given up just three runs on 11 hits in his last two starts with 17 strikeouts.
His pitch velocity, according to FanGraphs.com, has also increased significantly since Coach Pedroia saved the day. Before the fix, his average fastball in 2016 crossed the plate at 91.3 mph. Price averaged 93.1 mph in his first game after the adjustment and touched 96 in the fifth inning of that start, an 11-1 win over Houston. Price struck out 12.
Whenever Pedroia decides to hang ’em up, which shouldn’t be anytime soon, I hope the Sox can find a spot for him on the coaching staff.
(Michelle Berthiaume can be reached at 369-3338, mberthiaume@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @MonitorMichelle.)