Boston Red Sox outfielder Jackie Bradley continued his hot hitting on Friday night and extended his hitting streak to 25.
Last week, our own Eric Roseberry wrote about Red Sox outfielder Jackie Bradley breaking out offensively. It took a while for Bradley to put everything together, but it looks like the Red Sox are finally being rewarded for the patience with they showed the young outfielder while he was struggling at the plate in 2014 and the first half of 2015.
On Friday night, Bradley’s hot hitting continued when the 26 year-old hit a solo home run in the bottom of the second inning against the Cleveland Indians to extend his hitting streak to 25 games. He went 1-2 with the home run and two walks and raised his average to .340.
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Bradley’s streak began on April 24 against the Houston Astros when he went 2-6 with a double and two RBI in a 7-5 Red Sox win in extra innings at Fenway Park. He was batting .233/.277/.333 that day, and now, 25 games later, Bradley is batting .340/.399/.626. From May 8 through May 13, Bradley had six multi-hit games which increased his average from .288 to .341. He also didn’t hit his first home run of the season until the second game of the streak (April 25 against the Atlanta Braves) and he now has eight on the season.
So how is Bradley doing this? According to Jeff Sullivan of Fangraphs, Bradley has learned to hit just about every kind of pitch thrown to him.
"Now look at what’s happened this year. Bradley has stayed good against hard pitches, if slightly worse. But against the other pitches? Almost nobody has been better. Bradley’s been even more productive against them than he’s been against fastballs, and that’s incredible. He went from the 20th percentile to the 94th. These numbers are sort of noisy, but the take-home message is clear: now Bradley can hit just about anything."
During his first full season with the Red Sox in 2014, Bradley struggled to hit almost everything thrown at him. Hard pitches, soft pitches, it didn’t matter. In 127 games he batted .198/.265/.266 with one home run and 31 RBI. And when he began to make more contact with the fastball in 2015, opposing pitchers made adjustments and started throwing softer pitches. Somewhere along the line, Bradley made an adjustment, and after a slow start to his 2015 season, there was a substantial spike in Bradley’s production last August when he batted .354/.429/.734, but no one could have expected that he’d sustain those numbers or come close to repeating them. And even though, he’s not quite at that level in 2016, he has become the type of hitter that’s impossible to keep off the bases during this hot streak.
This season, Bradley is batting .356 against breaking pitches. He also has a .733 slugging percentage and a .378 ISO.
As you can see, when pitchers try to throw anything soft that’s low in the zone, Bradley’s hitting it. And his numbers are even more impressive when you filter the dates and only look at the 25-game streak. During that stretch, Bradley has a .370 batting average and a .852 slugging percentage against breaking pitches. Overall, he’s batting .407 during the streak.
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Now, this is still a small sample size as we’re only 41 games into the season, but if Bradley keeps up this type of production, he will be a huge asset to a Red Sox squad that is trying to return to the playoffs after a nearly three year absence.