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| JACKIE BRADLEY JR. |
RED SOX : BASEBALL 2014
April 13,2014.
c/o Alex Speier
WEEI.com
In spring training, it was an either/or. That's not necessarily the case anymore. The time may be coming when we see Shane Victorino and Grady Sizemore flanking Jackie Bradley Jr.
Disclaimer: Things can change. The Red Sox' evaluation of their team could change -- potentially significantly -- between now and whenever Victorino is activated from the disabled list. By the time Victorino is healthy, perhaps Bradley won't look like the most dynamic player on the team. And maybe, by that point, Grady Sizemore will look a bit more like a center fielder.
But right now, with Victorino on the DL, Bradley delivering an electrifying jolt and Sizemore looking tremendous in the batter's box but limited in the field, the Red Sox' roster dynamic may be shifting. What had been a straightforward proposition for the team in spring training -- Sizemore or Bradley as the Opening Day center fielder, with the other player breaking camp in Pawtucket -- is altering.
Victorino won't start baseball activities until later in the week, so the decision isn't immediate. But if Victorino were eligible and ready to come off the disabled list today, there's a very good chance that he would join both Sizemore and Bradley in comprising the Red Sox' default outfield alignment, something that the team wasn't considering at any point in the spring.
How did we get to this point?
For starters, Bradley has looked a lot like the player who proved so captivating in spring training of 2013, a game-altering defender who has rediscovered the swing that characterizes him at his best. On Monday, he delivered three hits and a pair of dazzling defensive plays that changed the course of the contest. On Tuesday, Bradley went 2-for-4, slamming a two-run double off the wall (after working from a 1-2 count to a full count with the bases loaded) and rocketing a single to right.
He's showing evidence of the all-fields approach that proved a staple of his ascent through the Sox' minor league system.
"The same, man," Xander Bogaerts, Bradley's teammate of much of the last three years, said of how the outfielder looks now as compared to when he's been at his best in the minors. "He's going the other way. Wherever the pitch is, he takes it and goes with it. He pretty much looks like the guy I know."
"The last couple nights, he stayed inside the baseball well, he gets a base hit to the left-center field gap last night, one off the wall tonight," added Sox manager John Farrell. "I think more evident by him not offering pitches that have been in close to him, tight on him, I think his approach at the plate is much like we saw last year in spring training and then late in the year last year when he came back to us."
Though he has no walks and five strikeouts in his 20 plate appearances, he's still hitting .400 with a .400 OBP and .500 slugging mark. He's 5-for-8 with runners in scoring position; the rest of the team is 10-for-63 (.159) in such situations. Meanwhile, he has looked capable of playing elite defense right now in either center or left field. At a time when Victorino's absence has been palpable, Bradley's ability to cover ground has emerged as an essential asset.
At the same time, as impressive as Sizemore has been at the plate, hitting .364/.440/.591 with three walks and four strikeouts, his defense has lagged behind in the regular season. It's a small, small, small sample (just seven games) but there are instances when Sizemore has gotten late breaks or seemed a step slow, and sometimes been both.
Perhaps the most glaring instance to date came on Tuesday night. Sizemore broke the wrong way on Donnie Murphy's two-out, third-inning pop-up to shallow center, and he didn't have the closing speed to reach the ball, with his dive coming up short on a double. Not only did the hit yield a run, but it prolonged the inning with another run eventually scoring and starter Felix Doubront's pitch count getting elevated to the point where he was knocked out of the game that inning.
But there have been other instances as well. As impressive as Sizemore's effort was on the deep fly ball to center on which he crashed headfirst into the fence on Monday, another center fielder might have been camped under the ball, thus avoiding a triple.
As of now, the Sox look like their best overall team might be one in which Bradley was in center flanked by Sizemore in left (where his range would go from below-average to above-average) and Victorino in right, thus transforming what has been a below-average outfield into an asset.
Such an alignment, of course, would necessitate a somewhat profound reorganization of the roster. Presumably, either Daniel Nava (who has minor league options left) would have to be sent down or traded -- unlikely, given John Farrell's claim that he doesn't view Nava's strong on-base numbers last year as a fluke and his roster versatility -- or a move involving Mike Carp, who has had just six plate appearances to date this season.
Yet the importance that the Sox attach to outfield defense -- where a single misplay can represent a multi-base rally catalyst -- and the team's overall defensive deficiencies to date (the Sox have converted about 65 percent of balls in play into outs so far this year, a mark that ranks 26th in the majors), are such that the Sox may be forced to consider roster possibilities that were off the table less than two weeks ago.
Of course, two weeks ago, it would have been difficult to anticipate Bradley looking like the Sox' best all-around player and Sizemore simultaneously looking like the team's best hitter, as has been the case in recent days.
Again, that view is subject to change between now and the time when Victorino returns from the disabled list. After all, the team is basing its assessments on a very small set of games. But at this moment, the Red Sox are already facing a host of roster decisions that are very different from the ones that confronted them during spring training. What had been an "either/or" may be emerging as an "and."
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