Is Jackie Bradley a Serious Non-Tender Candidate?
daltex
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If the Red Sox are really trying to cut their payroll $40 million, isn't it likely that they non-tender Bradley? After all, I've heard that he's due for somewhere around $10 million in arbitration. That's a lot for a center fielder who just can't him. Last three years his OPS+ seems to have settled in somewhere around 90. It's just hard to put a player like that in your lineup every day. It's been excused because of his defensive genius, but he's only won one gold glove. Not saying that is a great measure of his defense, only that it is a solid measure of the reputation of his defense. In other words, teams might be willing to trade for a below average offensive gold glove winner, but it is much harder to convince another team to not only pay $10 million for a CF who can't hit and isn't brilliant defensively, but even give up some players or "prospects" in return.
A word here about Red Sox fans. They tend to dramatically overvalue their players. Does anyone remember fans refusing the idea of trading Trot Nixon for Sammy Sosa? The Red Sox won't be able to get anywhere near what the fans would expect for Betts or Martinez, and maybe not anything at all for Bradley.
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They have won a few World Series recently so let them continue to do nonsensical things and waste big money I don’t care.
I read an article about the Red Sox money woes and they talked about Bradley. As an outside observer, I just never thought Bradley was worth that kind of money. Unless you have the luxury of having enough offense to cover that spot in the OF (Bogarts at SS is big), it's just not worth the lack of offense he gives you. Most teams will usually cover a weak hitting SS. In my mind, a good team won't be willing to give up much. An NL team would probably look at him as a 4th OF, late inning defensive replacement type player. JMO