Boston Red Sox outfielder Jackie Bradley Jr. is off to his worst start since 2014. Can he turn it around or are we seeing the beginning of the end?
Go back to October of 2016 and all the talk revolving around Jackie Bradley Jr. was about how he had broken out for the Boston Red Sox. It looked like he was one of the best center fielders in baseball, in fact. Then 2017 happened and people wondered if his true talent level was something significantly lower. 2018 was supposed to answer the question: Which Jackie Bradley Jr. is real? With one quarter of the season in the rear view mirror, the answer doesn’t look good.
His 42 wRC+ is actually worse than his horrid 2014 season where he posted a 46 over 127 games. He’s a long way from that kind of sample size and even if he’s far more 2017 than 2016, he’ll come up from those depths eventually. The question is, how far? With a .220 BABIP it seems there is plenty of room for positive regression. His career rate is .292 which would bring his triple slash line up to something around his 2017 numbers of .245/.343/.402. So in a way, he’s performing similarly to last year but with far worse luck.
Let’s get messy…
For some Boston Red Sox fans, that may be enough to sit back and wait for the hot streak and reevaluate later in the year. But we’re far too impatient here at CttP, so let’s dig deeper! Looking at his Baseball Savant player page it seems like that guess at a BABIP bump isn’t too far off. His expected BA is .221 and his expected SLG is .384. Those are based on launch angle and exit velocity and are pretty good indicators of how good a hitter is actually performing under the hood. Unfortunately, that’s still a really rough start to the season.
His current wOBA is .238 but his xwOBA is .306. Better, but still below league average. His 2017 wOBA was .313 so, again, he’s not far off from his 2017 performance. That’s after two seasons (230 games) of much more encouraging results. But the expected stats in those seasons do tell a slightly different story. Jackie Bradley Jr.has wOBA’s of .365 and .364 in 2015 and 2016. His xwOBA’s were .289 and .333, and his 2017 xwOBA was .320. In short, the range of expected results is much more consistent than the range of actual results.
Is it time to cut bait?
The expected stats suggest that he’s basically what we saw last year. A below average true talent hitter, but not massively below. He’s off to a terrible start in 2018, but he has always been streaky. There will be a hot streak and how long that hot streak is will determine whether he finishes the year a little above or a little below league average for results. The 5.3 fWAR 2016 season is likely going to end up a career high by a comfortable margin. But his current pace as a replacement level player is unlikely to hold up.
The floor on his production is kept comfortably high by his excellent defense. There aren’t many defenders in the outfield I’d rather see in center field than JBJ. He had the 8th highest outs above average at Baseball Savant in 2017. That included five 5-star catches, good for second most in baseball. He’s a special talent with the glove so he doesn’t need to be a stud at the plate to be worth starting.
Has he made any changes worth noting?
While the overall stats suggest he’s been a similar hitter year to year, there are a few things that catch the eye in his batter profile. He’s pulling the ball more than he ever has and his GB% is up to 52.4%. That’s a career high after setting a career high in 2017 at 49.0%. Not a good trend for a hitter whose best seasons have been built upon good power production on fly balls.
To be frank, he’s kind of baffling. He’s making quality contact at a similar rate to 2016 with a barrel percentage of 8.3 vs 8.6. His Brls/PA are right in line with Rafael Devers. But pitchers just aren’t afraid of him.
And who can blame them? He’s only hitting for power in a very small section of the strikezone. Here’s a look at his slugging percentage on pitches thrown to specific regions:
Are you punting or not?
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At the end of the day, what he’s doing at the plate just isn’t working. There are reasons to hope he’ll turn it around, hit a hot streak, and look respectable again in a month or two. But this team is in the midst of their most competitive season since the unexpectedly great 2013 club. They can’t afford to keep hoping for too long. If that hot streak doesn’t kick in by mid June, expect to hear rumblings about trade talks going on at Fenway.
The talent is there, and the approach appears to be producing consistent levels of quality contact over a larger sample. But as much as we love digging into these expected stats and seeing what’s going on under the hood, at the end of the day, the results need to be there. If they’re not, he may be demoted to a 4th outfielder before the season is finished.
If I’m forced to take a guess, I’ll say the Boston Red Sox will either be running J.D. Martinez out there as a regular defender or the team will trade for another outfielder some time in July. Martinez’s defense leaves a lot to be desired, but his bat may offset that enough. I just doesn’t feel like it’s going to come together for Jackie Bradley Jr. this season. I hope I look back at this and laugh at myself in a few months.