January 05, 2009
Cubs Get a Gamer
There are reports that Milton Bradley is close to a three-year, $30 million deal with the Cubs. Bradley, in a short season in 2008 was a legitimate MVP candidate, posting a .436 OBA and a .563 slugging percentage. For his career, he's not quite as good a hitter as Pat Burrell, but he can still play the outfield. Since Jim Edmonds was unlikely to repeat his 2008 batting stats, the Cubs now have a very solid outfield with Soriano, Bradley and Fukudome for frankly a very good price. It looks like teams are starting to grab the bargains.
Hat tip to River Ave. Blues, who makes the case the Yankees were right not to offer arbitration to Abreu, because if he accepted he would have been overpaid.
Wearing your rose-colored glasses today? Sure the stats are fine, but there's no reason to think he can play a full season, especially not as a position player. And receiving exponentially more media/fan attention isn't exactly going to help him avoid another meltdown.
A Milton Bradley fanboy. He only played 19 games in RF last year and ended the year on the DL - had a .939 FPCT. Nobody in MLB played more games and had a lower fpct. He played 126 G for a sub .500 team and got 2 MVP votes and finished 17th in the MVP voting so I guess he gets a top 20 spot. Soriano had a .975 fpct in LF and nobody in the NL made more errors in fewer games - Adam Dunn and Freddy Lewis actually made more errors and had lower fpcts. Fukudome only plyed 12 games in CF and had a rf of 1.5 - no qualifier had a rf under 2.4. He was middle of the pack in RF though. So you have potentially the worst LF (with Burrell and Dunn probably gone) and RF in the league and a guy playing out of position in CF.
Man, that's a steal. I wish the Braves had gone after him.
Bradley is a rich man's Jeffery Hammonds. Good luck getting him to play more than 300 games over the next three years.
The signing makes little sense, he is more fit to be an AL DH, not an everyday outfielder. I know they need lefty pop in that lineup but they could have at least gotten Ibanez for the same price. Bradley is injury prone as well.
Tom
http://thetraderarena.today.com
This signing reminds me of the recent Veterans Committee vote where Dick Allen--almost certainly the most gifted player among those being considered--finished at the rear when the vote was tallied. Barring a sudden miraculous conversion to non-idiocy, Bradley will be remembered in much the same way as Allen: a great talent who nonetheless did more harm than good for the teams he played on.
