We Wish You Well Jackie Bradley Jr. (DFA 8.4.22)
- Thread starter CarolinaBeerGuy
- Start date
He just had a baby girl a few weeks ago, so happy for him in the sense that while this may not have been a perfect outcome for him the timing was cosmically opportune.
His defense while putting up that 112 was also mediocre, overall he was basically a league average player. This year he's putting up near career best numbers both offensive and defensively.
He had a WAR of 2.3 (i.e, not league average) and two years of cost-control remaining. If he had simply repeated last year's performance this deal would look only slightly less horrible.
This is fun to watch. One of my favorite plays of his (at 1:16 in the video) was against the Twins a few years ago. He had misplayed a ball in left center a bit and, I think, a run may have scored. Then, later in the inning the ball is hit about 300' into left center for what seems like a pretty routine sac fly. Instead, Jackie--who is incredibly fucking pissed at what he did earlier in the inning--uncorks a throw home at 103.4 MPH to get the runner out. It was absolutely incredible. Whole thing is here.
He was my favorite Red Sox player on this roster. His defense was superb and I always loved the way he carried himself. The Killer Bs was the best overall outfield I ever saw play for Boston (maybe 1976 had bigger bats, but the Bs defense was spectacular) and JB was a big part of it. I wish him well and will miss him.
Here's the problem with JBJ...The streaks. He went for long periods of doing nothing, got hot and his numbers got better. Rinse, wash, repeat and the cold streaks seemed to last longer than the hot streaks. Evening out that production over the season(s) rather than getting big blasts in small bunches does make a difference.
2.3 bwar 2.1 fwar when average is roughly 2, so pretty much average. If he repeated last years performance then his 2023 salary wouldn't really end up much of a bargain.
I'm wondering what it would take for you to ever admit that Bloom did something that did work out, let alone that he made an actual mistake. At this point, the Sox are out $16 million, got about 100 games of catastrophic performance out of JBJ, and have two minor leaguers who look like long shots to ever do anything. The Brewers have a player having an good year at a cheap price. Why is it wrong to question the thought process that got us to this point?
Bloom did a fantastic job acquiring Renfoe for essentially nothing, but he turned that coup into, thus far, a disaster. Shouldn't he be criticized for that? I'm sure you were happy to give him credit last season for Renfoe's acquisition.
Maybe Binelas and/or Hamilton turn out to be actual productive major leaguers in a few years, but the odds that either of them produce what Renfoe has this year are long. Will you at least admit that could be a possible outcome, or are we forbidden to discuss the merits of this deal until Binelas/Hamilton are either productive major leaguers or released?
To get to this point you're ignoring the thought process, and only focusing on what actually happened this year, not what was expected to happen. Renfroe wasn't expected to be this good, JBJ wasn't expected to be that bad. The thought process made a ton of sense, the results thus far have been bad.
One also can’t write off the two prospects less than one year after the trade. Unless one has an agenda.
Isn't part of Bloom's job to accurately project what will happen with players? If JBJ ended up with a .900 OPS this year, I'm guessing we wouldn't be blasting the trade by saying: well, that certainly wasn't expected! Similarly, identifying value in a guy like Schreiber was a great move because most folks certainly didn't expect him to be this good.
If not for watching this, I would have completely forgotten that De Aza was a Red Sox player at one point.
The Steamer projections on Fangraphs had JBJ at 215/293/364. Do you consider this acceptable for a starting corner outfielder on a team with playoff hopes and a high enough payroll that it could afford to pay 10 mil for guy who maybe would pitch for a month this year and effectively spend another 8 mil on a couple of prospects who were not in the Brewers' top 10?
They punted on RF.
I think Bloom going off steamer projections would be a misstep. Further you have to factor in Duran. The front office knew they were taking a chance on JBJ, but it was considered acceptable because one of their top prospects is an outfielder. The thought process was sound even if the results weren't.
No, I don’t think the Sox look at Fangraphs for projections, I’m just trying to get a baseline for what a reasonable expectation on JBJ was. And of course, as bad as FG pegged him, they were too optimistic.
The other question is why it took this long to fix it. The Reds wanted to hold on to Pham in case they got back in it?
If he does that while still playing elite defense it's semi acceptable, at least in the short term. Unfortunately his bat was worse and his glove went from elite to just good.
It's semi-acceptable in a world where they simply didn't have the resources to do any better. But as mentioned, they used about 18 million of the year's payroll on guys who, by design, were going to help little this year. That was a luxury a team with playoff hopes and a starting RF projected to have a .657 OPS couldn't afford.
Maybe they felt Refsnyder and Duran fixed it. Maybe the Reds were thinking they could get more for Pham and should wait until closer to the deadline. Maybe given how horrible the defense has been Bloom was happy having JBJ around. Just because something needs to be fixed doesn't mean Bloom can snap his fingers and fix it.
That was a great video. Not to take anything away from some of his accomplishments at all, but you have to wonder what some of those 3rd base coaches were thinking? Don't they have scouting reports?
I have to respond to this because its literally his fucking job to anticipate what will happen - no one is going to be right all of the time that doesnt obviate the need to project the future and understand where the soft spots in your model are. There isn't one "correct" future - there is a spectrum. All businesses leaders do this and when make the wrong calls, they dont do well.
Hunter Renfroe is doing Hunter Renfroe things. Like basically what he has done his entire career other than the COVID shortened season in TB. Hes been a 2 win player basically his entire career with a 250/300/500 bat and fringe average defense. Hes been a bit better this year due to park effects/league performance, but this is entirely within expectations for him. If its the best season of his career, thats fine, but this isnt some replacement level player suddenly becoming a 5 win player, its a 2-2.5 win player maybe getting to 3.
Im not sure who thought JBJ was going to be considerably better than what he was. Projection models had him being a terrible hitter and he was a bit worse, which isnt entirely surprising. Models aren't perfect and when isolated on a player who was as terrible a hitter as JBJ was last season - its not going to be reliable - the performance is just way too far outside of other observations. Position players just dont get 400 PAs of 160/230/260 - they get cut instead.
I say all of this as someone who like the trade at the time and still have no problem with it in theory - only the implementation where they didnt go get a legitimate right handed hitting 4th OF.
So basically the GM can never be wrong. He wouldn't make a trade that he'd expect would make the team worse, so even if that's what happens, it's not his fault.
"Hey, investment manager, why is my account down 40% this year?
"Well, I didn't expect that technology stocks would fall that far."
"Oh, well that's okay then."
Bloom took a gamble. It didn't pay off. That's entirely on him. Furthermore, given how bad JBJ was last year and how much money he was owed, it was a bad gamble, just like owning software stocks at 20x revenues and EV companies with no business.
Last edited:
Nobody is disputing that it didn't work out. That is on Bloom. The thought process behind the move made sense.
It didn’t make sense to everyone. I didn’t particularly care for it at the time it occurred. I’m not saying it’s a total bust, because we won’t know for a couple years how the prospects turn out. But the deal made the major league roster worse and we didn’t pick up the slack via another roster move.
I've said it before, and I'll probably say it forever. I've never seen anybody play the outfield wall the way Jackie did. He always knew where he was, always was figuring out a way to make soft contact while moving at full speed. All those amazing plays, and he never hurt himself slamming into a wall or on a dive.
Seeing all those plays, and knowing who's playing outfield for the Sox now... we aren't going to be seeing anything like that for awhile. Sucks for Sox pitchers.
God that seems like a lifetime ago. I know it was naive, but it really felt like that team was going to be a force for years to come. The Killer Bs, JD filling the gaping hole that Ortiz left, Chris Fucking Sale, Kimbrel locking things down in the ninth, Devers and Bogey shoring up the infield, BrockHolt!, Vazquez providing the heart and soul.
Baseball is crazy, man.
In the off-chance JBJ reads this, thank you, sir. My dad passed away last November at the age of 82 and you were one of our favorites to talk about and root for. You frustrated us at the plate some times (as you, no doubt, did yourself) but you amazed us in the field. Enjoy some time with your new daughter while things get sorted out for you professionally. Thank you for giving my dad and I some bonding time.
JBJ was actually worse in 2021 than in 2022; he rebounded from a 34 OPS+ to a robust 58. So this bad was definitely on the table.
I get the idea of trading Renfroe coming off a good season for prospects. I'm mystified at Jackie's inclusion in the deal. Did they think he still had value at his contract? Did taking on his money result in better prospects? Was it for PR? They would have been better off just dealing Renfroe for prospects and using the money savings somewhere else.
My guess is it was the money that allowed for better prospects. Hoping we revisit this trade in 2-3 years with cheers.
That's exactly what it was. The question is, was using $$$ to buy mediocre prospects (neither were in the Brewers' top 10) while having a pretty glaring hole in RF the best use of resources? Could they have instead signed Joc Pederson, Tommy Pham, or Andrew McCucthen? Or just ridden it back with Renfroe, who if nothing else proved he could produce in Boston and had two years of cost control remaining?
And to be sure, the prospects don't have to turn into Mike Trout for this deal to turn around. If just one of them is decent, 2-3 WAR player for a few years that changes things. But don't hold your breath -- they are currently ranked 19th and 40th in the Sox' system by Fangraphs.
Last edited:
Maybe I don't have my finger on the pulse of what player-for-prospect deals go for, but from what I can tell both Binelas and Hamilton seem like longshots to do anything. Regardless, it was kind of curious for a team in Boston's position (playoff run last year) to make a move that hurt the big league club in order to add a couple middling prospects and not even save any money in the process.
Grand slam vs. Osuna with Castig's call should anyone care to watch.
View: https://youtu.be/c9Ngt8DNUJU?t=204
"Looking around Minute Maid Park, fans are streaming for the exits."
He singlehandedly destroyed the Astros that year.
View: https://youtu.be/c9Ngt8DNUJU?t=204
"Looking around Minute Maid Park, fans are streaming for the exits."
He singlehandedly destroyed the Astros that year.
If you are going to talk about the thought process, I think the context of when the deal was made needs to be included. This deal and the Paxton signing were made right before the lockout started. At that time, it looked likely that a significant part of the 2022 season would be canceled. Both those deals seem like gambles that a lot of the season would be wiped out. The more games lost, the better those deals would be.
At the time, it wouldn't be nutty to anticipate that much of the season might be canceled. Even months later, plenty of people on SOSH thought a big chunk of the season would be lost:
https://sonsofsamhorn.net/index.php?threads/how-many-official-regular-season-games-do-you-think-the-boston-red-sox-will-play-this-season.35953/
Of course, as it turned out, no games were lost, and both these deals have been flops so far.
But if you are talking about the thought process behind them, I think the looming lockout and potential cancellation of many games, and possibly the whole season, was part of the thought process. It was an additional gamble that Bloom took and lost, but at the time seemed like it might turn into a smart hedge.
Basically, if Bradley bounced back with the bat by moving back to Fenway (he did, but in home games only, and was horrific on the road) OR if one of the prospects becomes a good major leaguer someday, OR if a big part of the season was wiped out, then this deal looks way better.
But none of those things has happened (we'll see about the prospects, Binelas has only had just over 100 at-bats in AA so far).
I love when SoSH has these threads for one of our departing players...the threads really remind me how much great baseball I have been lucky to see from the Red Sox. JBJ was electrifying in the field and just a really good dude on and off the field. I will miss him and hope he somehow gets a chance to read this thread...he seems like a player who'd feel really good about reading a lot of this!
Yes! Just unspeakably clutch in that series. In game two, he had a bases clearing double off Gerritt Cole to take 5-4 lead. In game four, he had a two-run HR in what ended up an 8-6 game. 3/15 with a double and two HR for 9 RBI in 5 games. 3 strikeouts, 4 walks. 11.9% championship probability added.
Basically, he had three hits and each of them was decisive (or nearly so) in a game the Sox won. The Astros kept him hitless in game five, but the damage was already done.
Sad to see JBJ go. While good offense is fun to watch, exceptional defense is so much better. Any MLB player can hit a home run, or a 9th inning Grand Slam. Most can steal bases or do a hard dive into home plate to beat a throw. However, there are, or have been, very few players that can do what JBJ did, day in, day out, in center field. He made the difficult seem routine and the impossible seem possible and oftentimes spectacular.
JBJ has been my favorite player on the late 2010s teams. He was fun to watch in the field, and his struggles at the plate followed by being awesome humanized him.
Looking like JBJ stands for Jackie Blue Jay! Hearing extensive chatter but still seeing nothing official.
Chris Cotillo
@ChrisCotillo
1m
Source confirms: Jackie Bradley Jr. signing with Blue Jays. @ZekeTelemaco first.
Chris Cotillo
@ChrisCotillo
5s
It’s a major league deal for JBJ who stays in the AL East.
@ChrisCotillo
1m
Source confirms: Jackie Bradley Jr. signing with Blue Jays. @ZekeTelemaco first.
Chris Cotillo
@ChrisCotillo
5s
It’s a major league deal for JBJ who stays in the AL East.
Now that the Red Sox are effectively paying JBJ to play for a division opponent, the trade looks even worse.
I doubt we'll see much of that if he's used in a defensive role. And if he gets hot and they give him more PAs during that stretch. . .we'll never hear the end of it here.
Isn't the one positive of this (other than removing his bat from our lineup), eliminating the $8M buyout in the offseason?
No, Sox still owe him that. He cleared waivers and signed as a FA.