Milton Bradley doesn't need saving, he needs to deliver
There's a reason the Seattle Mariners sent $9 million to the Chicago Cubs to offset the cost of their taking Carlos Silva off the M's hands: Milton Bradley, for all the drama his career has produced, is a significant upgrade from the slippery slope of Silva, who tried to save his career through dieting and yoga instead by of pitching well. At least Don Wakamatsu knows what to work on with Bradley, who is famous for his temper and brooding, to get a better-than-average performance from his player.
When he's playing, Bradleys a better-than-average player. He's also a fit with the small-ball game played in Seattle.
For example, the M's season on-base percentage (OBP) in 2009 was .314, while Bradley, who alledgedly wrecked the Cubs' season, reached based in 37.8 percent of his at-bats. In 2008, his OBP was .436, which would add roughly half a run per game for the Mariners. For his 10-year career, Bradley's reached based 37.1 percent of the times he batted, while the Mariners as a team had a .3357 OBP, mostly due to the great seasons early in the decade. For the past five years, the M's have delivered a tepid .322 OBP. Bradely is an upgrade in an offense oriented around moving runners along the basepaths.
By contrast, Carlos Silva only managed to add runs for the opposition. It was never clear what former M's GM Bill Bavasi saw in the too-big righty-throwing Silva. A potential Sabathia on the cheap? Not at $48 million for four years.
The question for the Mariners is, can Wakamatsu and Ken Griffey Jr. work the kind of clubhouse magic they did last year on Bradley as an individual player? The notion that the clubhouse is highly functional and could be disrupted by Bradley's presence doesn't hold water, as the team took a collection of average offensive performances in 2009 and made a winning season of it. Not just because of the pitching, but because the environment, the belief system Wakamatsu preaches, actually changes players' engagement with their teammates.
Bradley, who has been hurt a lot during his career, has played 120+ games the last two seasons. As a platooning DH with Griffey and in the outfield with Ryan Langerhans, Michael Saunders and Bill Hall, he can be rested as necessary to prevent injury. Moreover, the M's have lost fewer days to injuries than many teams, so Bradley is an appropriate project for Rick Griffin and his trainers.
In the end, however, the team will not make the mistake the Cubs did with Bradley, which was to treat him as a problem waiting to happen.
During the 2008 season, when Bradley was an All-Star for the San Diego Padres, he was expected to play well and he did. A bizarre coach-related injury ended his season, but that is merely what set the stage for his disastrous 2009 campaign, when he struggled and the Cubs gave up on him rather than acknowledging the wider problems with the team. If the Mariners treat Bradley as a professional, demanding good play and working on his temper through the good influence of Griffey, the deal will be a net win for Seattle.
