Q. What is Milton Bradley's situation?
A. /cosign on releasing Bradley. And SSI will even go so far as to gingerly guess that it's what they're going to do.
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Q. Why wouldn't they release Bradley?
A. Large companies, with 4+ layers of management, operate under a lot of internal political pressure. Any $$$-intensive "sunk cost" makes somebody look real bad, and it can weaken an exec's political capital if not actually shorten his rope.
A writeoff like this can reduce a director's Mario lives from two to one (though it doesn't here).
Everybody who chimed in on acquiring Bradley would take a painful hit if MB had to be released in May and ... what, $9,000,000 written off?
That's not just the Mariners. That's any big company. It's usually unfair to ask execs to step out into the dunking tank and take baseball throws like that. Remember, my man Capt Jack is coming off the dreary Josh Lueke winter... we don't notice that he was able to nudge Oversight into approving that extra bat...
The M's are edgy, though, and if anybody would do it, I'd expect they would.
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It wouldn't have a lot to do with Bradley's performance good or bad. They knew he was a relative dead weight when they acquired him. It's not like they now go, "Oh, okay, I guess Bradley's not going to help us much."
It's like they now go, "All right, the offense just scuttled another little roll we got on. We can't carry this any more."
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Q. Was Bradley's defense really that bad over the weekend?
A. It was gasp-inducing.
You know that Dr. D isn't married to pretty defense. You know that he's been the biggest voice for moderation on Bradley's overall presence and personality.
But we were at two of the games Friday-Sunday ... that game Saturday might have been the single most embarrassing defensive game I've seen played in 40 years, being there live, I mean.
He was trotting after balls that landed one yard away from him at the end of the jog. During Saturday's game, this occurred three separate times. He caught a fourth ball, and a crowd full of Soccer Moms gave him a loud sarcastic ovation. Soccer moms, mind you. This ain't New Yawk.
He made some throw that left the playing field, I believe ... throwing from LF he might have made the 3B stands.
The word "stunned" gets thrown around a lot. But I literally was stupefied. I thought there must have been some non-baseball explanation for his actions in left field.
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It was an interesting contrast, too, because during the same game, Michael Saunders made three separate Gold Glove plays in the power alleys. It was a whale of a contest between Bradley and Saunders.
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Q. Can you write off his bat?
A. We have been opining for several months that Bradley cannot catch up to a 93 fastball.
Not 96. 93. And coming from SSI you know that's not FKey 7 dogma. Literally, any decent 92-93 fastball out and over is by him.
Don't take my eye's word for it. Here, we checked his pitch values on fastballs the last five years:
- 2007 - +1.6 runs above average per 100 fastballs
- 2008 - +1.6
- 2009 - +1.2
- 2010 - (-0.9)
- 2011 - (-1.4)
Look. There comes a point when you just have to give a guy's locker to the next man in line.
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Q. You think the M's got the guts?
A. If SSI has figured these guys out ....
Here's their way of looking at it. They watched him this weekend, and they went, "Well, patience is fine. But if he can't even catch a fly ball any more, there's no excuse left to keep him."
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Everybody gets old. I should know. :- ) The man played 1,000 games in the Big Show and made $35,000,000 at it.
Give him a big handshake and say g'bye. He was a lot better athlete than you or I ever were.
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Respectfully,
Jeff Clarke
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