In something of a surprise, the Cubs have suspended Milton Bradley for the rest of the season for conduct detrimental to the team. There are about two weeks left in the season, so in the midst of the big pile-on, I’d like to ask one question: Who the hell has ever been suspended for two weeks for what they said to the media? This is a severe and unwarranted overreaction, a cynical public-relations ploy designed to curry favor with fans and the media and distract both groups from a Cubs season that is ending with a whimper.
The interview, published in Saturday’s Arlington Daily Herald, certainly wasn’t a high-water mark for Bradley. When asked if he’d enjoyed his time in Chicago, he said he hadn’t, he pointed out that it’s a media-saturated environment and he connected what he perceived as a negative atmosphere to the Cubs’ inability to win a World Series for a century. He clearly hasn’t been comfortable in Chicago, and coupled with the perception that he’s played poorly and a few incidents in which his notorious temper has gotten the better of him, he’s become a lightning rod for blame.
His comments in the Herald weren’t particularly new or enlightening, and they didn’t attack any individual. They weren’t profane or notably inflammatory. For this, he gets sent home for two weeks. By doing so, Hendry is blatantly pandering to the disgruntled fan base and the local media, as Carrie Muskat reported as far as Hendry’s comments on the subject for MLB.com:
“I’m not going to let our great fans become an excuse, I’m not going to tolerate not answering questions from the media respectfully.”
Really, now. This is why you’ve suspended one of your best players for two weeks, because it’s mission-critical that your players respect the fans and treat the media well? That’s nonsense, and the rush to back up Hendry and tear down Bradley is yet another example of the co-dependent relationship between baseball teams and the free media they rely upon. Players don’t take two-week suspensions for being rude, and they don’t take two week suspensions for the content of their quotes. Come to think of it, players don’t take two-week suspensions; the last non-drug-related suspension of this length was Albert Belle‘s, and he threw a baseball at a fan who was heckling him from the stands.
Hendry can do this because he’s the general manager of a team that woke up on Sunday 11 games out of first place and seven games out of the wild-card race, effectively eliminated from contention. Let’s be very clear that this suspension would not be happening if the Cubs had continued their late charge to the fringe of the race, or if they had any kind of chance of making the postseason. Let’s also be very clear that this suspension would not be happening had Bradley’s stats been comparable to last year’s. Bradley isn’t being suspended because of what he said; he’s being suspended because he did so with a .240 batting average and the Cubs are buried in the standings.
Here’s what really bugs me, also from Hendry:
“The only real negativity here is his own production.”
I expect the sports-radio mongrels and the beer-swilling casual fans to be unable to look past a .240 batting average and 40 RBI, to evaluate Bradley using the same metrics they did Andre Dawson and Ernie Banks and Hack Wilson. I expect more from Hendry, who should recognize that those figures don’t do Bradley justice. The outfielder hasn’t played to expectations, but those expectations were unrealistic-last year was a peak season and involved lots of DH time. Moreover, Bradley has played more than he has in almost any season, and despite a low batting average has been a productive member of the lineup. Bradley is fifth on the Cubs in Runs Above Replacement Player, and tied for third among their regulars with a .271 EqA. His .378 OBP has been a significant asset for a team that carried three OBP sinks in the lineup for most of the season.
The big surprise is that for all the questions about whether he could, Bradley has mostly stayed in the lineup, starting 107 games in the field and playing 915 defensive innings. That’s the second-highest mark of his career, and the most he’s played afield since 2004, when he was 26.
Bradley can do three things: he can hit, he can play in the field and he can stay in the lineup. As his entire career has shown, though, he can do just two of those things at any one time, and for Hendry to have been surprised by this-in fact, for him to throw the player under the bus for it-is ridiculous. Bradley played about as much as could reasonably be expected for a player of his known physical limitations. He posted a .378 OBP in the process. His batting average and power suffered, and he didn’t play a particularly good brand of right field, but he played. If he was a disappointment, it was a case of excessive expectations-or not remembering that the Cubs can’t use the DH-as much as it was a problem with his performance.
Moreover, the Cubs aren’t all that far from where they were supposed to be. They’re on pace to go 83-79; I had them going 87-75, and I still think that was pretty realistic. The Cubs are four games off that projected pace, which seems so much worse because the Cardinals are 15 games ahead of theirs. The Cardinals resurrected Joel Pineiro, got a mostly full season from Chris Carpenter, and traded for Matt Holliday, none of which has anything to do with Milton Bradley or the Cubs. The Cubs are off their feed because Aramis Ramirez missed time and was replaced with zeroes, because the bullpen was even worse than expected, because Alfonso Soriano was awful, and yes, because Milton Bradley didn’t hit for as much power as was expected. He’s part of the picture, but far from the entirety of it.
I expect Jim Hendry to know these things, but if Hendry were to admit that Bradley has played about as well and as often as could reasonably be expected, then he’d have to answer the question, as valid today as it was nine months ago, as to why he was signing a player who was a poor fit for his roster and his league. I expect Hendry to realize that much of last year’s success was built on players who had no place to go but down, but I suspect he doesn’t. So it’s much better to turn the spotlight on to Bradley’s mouth and hope no one looks too carefully at the original decision. Signing Bradley was a mistake at the time, not because Bradley has a temper, but because he can’t do all three things at once.
As far as Bradley is concerned, I feel much the same as I do every time he gets himself into this kind of situation: he shouldn’t talk to the media. He doesn’t have any ability to be circumspect, to speak in clichés, to say something without saying anything. I don’t necessarily mind this quality in people, but it’s a recipe for disaster in today’s sports world. There are going to be microphones and notebooks and cameras, and he’s simply never found a way to co-exist with them. It doesn’t help that, because of his past, he’s an attractive target for reporters; if you talk to Bradley, there’s a chance that you’ll end up with a story, a chance that isn’t there with, say, Ryan Theriot or Kosuke Fukudome. It’s similar to what would happen to Barry Bonds, where reporters would interact with him just so they could write their standard “Barry was rude to me” tale of woe. It really shouldn’t be a story any longer that Milton Bradley has a temper, or speaks out of turn, or even that he isn’t terribly happy in Chicago or with the Cubs, but it is.
Even if it is, suspending him for two weeks for expressing those thoughts is disproportionate to the point of ridiculousness. If it’s considered fair game to suspend a player for what were fairly measured (if critical) comments, I shudder to think what kind of doors this opens up for player discipline. Milton Bradley may or may not have been out of line here, but Jim Hendry definitely was.
—
I don’t have another place for this, so I’m going to put it here because it kind of is the intersection of the Cubs and reliever usage, the latter topic being a regular theme here of late. A couple of weeks ago Lou Piniella moved Kevin Gregg out of the closer role because Gregg’s performance had cost the Cubs a lot of games. Gregg’s tateriffic tendencies-a homer allowed every five innings or so-are one reason why the Cubs have fallen short of expectations this season. So it would make sense for Piniella to keep Gregg out of game-critical situations.
So how is it you don’t want the guy closing out games, but you think it’s a good idea to have him face Albert Pujols with a runner on first, two outs, and a one-run lead in the seventh? That’s the situation in which Piniella brought Gregg into the game last night. It makes absolutely no sense to me that you would choose Gregg, the most homer-prone reliever on the staff, to pitch to one of the best home-run hitters in baseball in a spot where a home run could lose you the game, and all other outcomes are survivable.
This is where we’ve gotten with reliever usage, where the number attached to the inning is all that seems to matter. That was the ballgame, right there, and Piniella chose the pitcher he’s already decided he doesn’t want pitching in high-leverage spots to get him out of it. Set aside that it worked and just consider the thought process that got him to that point. What’s the path through the decision tree that makes you decide a guy is unfit for protecting ninth-inning leads but suited for pitching to Albert Pujols in the game’s biggest moment?
The way in which the industry uses relief pitchers is broken, and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.
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Now, I agree with the overall point IF the suspension is solely due to his public media exposure. I strongly suspect that it is not. Bradley didn't seem like that bad a guy in Cleveland, but one was hard-pressed to find a Cleveland player who expressed much in the way of a lamentation upon his exit.
I don't understand why the Cubs didn't handle this quietly instead of publically, though. I'm totally on board with Joe on this sentiment.
That said, he has performed miserably (at least relative to his compensation). But that shouldn't surprise anyone.
Maybe you are hopeless. But I hope not.
Bradley is an idiot that behaves like a 10-year-old. Professionals do not conduct themselves that way. Hendry made the right call.
Hendry shouldn't sign a rude, breakable, volatile player if he doesn't want rude, breakable, volatile players who might potentially have down years.
Bradley should keep his mouth shut and worry about his own production. After all, he's the first one publicly blaming his failures on somebody else in this story.
Piniella would have probably won the game in 9 had he kept his original closer philosophy, just because Marmol would have been available for Pujols, Holliday, and Ludwick and Gregg could have pitched to the back-end in the 9th.
Is the perception of Bradley being a "bad guy" purely media-driven? I don't know. The guy was in a physical confrontation with Eric Wedge in Cleveland, and tried to attack a KC broadcaster while in Texas last year.
I empathize with Bradley because he clearly has temper problems, and I think he has gotten somewhat of a bad rap. But he's also behaved badly, and when you behave badly and play badly, you open yourself up to be both criticized and disciplined. While I agree Chicago shouldn't have signed Bradley, I think it's for BOTH performance and chemistry reasons.
I don't pretend to be able to morally classify who is a "bad guy" and who isn't, and I wouldn't want to a a person generally. But were I a baseball GM? I probably wouldn't sign Milton Bradely.
I guess alot of this is the series of guys who the Rangers have brought in over the last few years who were considered either done, or "never weres" who blossomed in Texas, only to get big contracts elsewhere. (David Delucci in '05, Gary Matthews Jr, Rod Barajas and Mark DeRosa in '06, Bradley and Ramon Vazquez in '08)
What I hate most about the reactionary mainstream sports media is the way they force everyone to talk like Crash Davis advised in "Bull Durham." If we reacted positively when somebody told the truth, people would tell the truth more often.
Of course that's a little silly, but most of the city of Cal Ripken wouldn't be in any way happy about signing Milton Bradley.
You may be right in the abstract, but no, "treating the fans right" is nowhere near the top of teams' priorities.
http://www.markgrace.com/bio_childhood.html
Your depiction of Bradley's season [production] is far too positive. No, he shouldn't have been expected to produce at last year's clip. But to try and defend his performance this season as being valuable to the Cubs is off base.
This doesn't justify Hendry's move; given the innumerable socially accepted ways to misplace players for a while (strained oblique, flu-like symptoms, leaving the team to attend to a personal matter) Hendry's decision to squirt kerosene on the fire with just two weeks left in the season is puzzling at best, and perhaps is nothing more than a particularly violent manifestation of his nonbuyer's remorse over Abreu.
"However, the Cubs have yet to issue a formal notice of the suspension to either Bradley, his agents or the union...Bradley hasn't yet been informed whether the suspension is with or without pay. He also hasn't been told what the specific basis for the suspension was."
(http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4492909)
So the Cubs have not formally communicated what the suspension is for, whether it's paid or unpaid. Doesn't that say a lot about the organization?
I'm not a Milton Bradley supporter by any stretch, but unless your blaming him for all the off-the field comments AND his failure to meet the expectations attached to a $10 million dollar a season contract - this suspension doesn't make any sense. Even then, there are better ways of handling it.
Or maybe the injury was his version of Derek Bell's Operation Shutdown
...and in the meantime the Hendry era continues apace, with the impending need to eat much of the $20 million or so owed Bradley, which is only one of a number of horrific Hendry contracts that will encumber the team into mediocrity in the coming years.
Hendry is the guy that screwed the pooch here. To think the volatile Bradley was going to produce at last year's level while playing everyday was just insane. The guy's age and injury history had to be major red flags.
I rarely side with the MLBPA, but I can't believe that if they file a grievous this suspension will voided in a hurry. They won't have to play him but they will have to pay him.
BTW, if you want to unload Bradley ship him to the Royals for Jose Guillen. We will even throw in Kyle Fransworth.
Whether the "punishment" fits the "crime" is debatable, I guess. But who needs it? Bradley torpedoed every bridge he may have had in that clubhouse, and he's not going to help them make the playoffs at this point. I say good riddance.
I want to make two points here about Bradley's on-field performance. One, I'll reiterate that it hasn't been that bad; he has a .378 OBP that was as high as .400 a couple of weeks ago, and it's really hard to be a "bad" player while getting on base 38% of the time. He hasn't hit for average or power, hasn't repeated his peak season. Stunning for a mid-30s free agent, truly.
The second is that you can't suspend players for underperforming your expectations. What Bradley has hit this season is irrelevant to the case for suspending him, and that Hendry and the Cubs are eager to elide this issue, to allow Bradley's batting average to serve as de facto justification for this decision, is squirrely at best. You can't use that as a factor at all.
So if Milton Bradley is being suspended for the reasons outlined by Hendry, it's wrong. It's wrong to suspend players for what they say to the press, especially while at the same time mandating that they do so. If he's being suspended in any part at all, even .0001%, for his performance, that is also wrong, because you cannot do that.
If there's more to this story, then, let's hear it. Otherwise, this suspension is a farce, and Hendry and the Cubs out of line. Just because they're taking their frustrations out on someone unpopular doesn't make it right.
It's in the best interests of the Cubs to _play_ Bradley. They would want to either to get as much value as they can for his contract, or to increase his trade value.
Maybe Bradley has been legitimately hurt the last few weeks and wasn't coming back anyway. Maybe Bradley shut himself down. Either way, I doubt the suspension was anything other than a last resort.
Hendry wasn't the first GM who couldn't figure Bradley out. Nor is Hendry the
type to call out his own players through the media. Whatever went on was seerious, and we might not be getting the whole story.
I'm also not sure there needs to be more to the story. Bradley basically says in that article that he hates playing for the Cubs. So the Cubs said, all right, so long, then. While this may be fairly unusual, I think it's also fairly unusual for a player to come right out and say he hates playing for the team he plays for, and usually if that does happen the player is traded shortly thereafter. If I grouched around my office every day and told my boss that I didn't like anyone I had to work with and hated the company's environment, what are the odds I *wouldn't* be given my walking papers?
Remember when he left Texas even with the great stats, the buzz was they couldn't wait for him to be out of the clubhouse too.
I think they took an opportune moment to get rid of a guy that they didn't want in the clubhouse.
I know what you're saying about production, but similarly to Belle and Bonds, I think for a team to put up with you, you need to produce at a high level. Otherwise teams can't afford to keep you around. He came across as a very selfish player, finding a way to play in a lot of those games when he really wasn't healthy enough to. But he needed to play for the contract to vest. And the Cubs walked on eggshells and let him pinch hit randomly when he was crippling the club in April. Most clubs could have DL'd him then. But they knew he would go ballistic and claim they were tryuing to cheat him on the contract.
In today's environment of trying to be more team oriented and youth oriented, I wonder if the Cubs will even be able to give him away. He's run through a lot of clubs and I don't think any of them are excited to give him a second shot. Though I guess for $50K he'd be easy to cut in April if he wasn't overproducing.
Honestly he needs to play in the minor leagues where the lack of attention may allow to be in his own little world.
I do agree with Joe that Hendry made a mistake with signing Bradley, but I also think the suspension is legitimate.
This isn't Milton's first time ripping the fans or the Cubs either. Throughout his career, he's blamed the umpires, blamed race, blamed everything else for his lot in life. He still hasn't learned that he has to be accountable for some things.
Maybe the punishment was a bit too harsh, but I also can't think of any people who treated their teammates, their manager, the umpires fan base this way this frequently. Even Barry Bonds, Albert Belle, Carl Everett, weren't this bad.
So, I'm not sure if the punishment necessarily fits the crime, but in a lost season, I think it's better to sit him than to risk some kind of public physical incident.
This is from the piece on ESPN.com:
"However, the Cubs have yet to issue a formal notice of the suspension to either Bradley, his agents or the union...Bradley hasn't yet been informed whether the suspension is with or without pay. He also hasn't been told what the specific basis for the suspension was."
(http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=4492909)
So the Cubs have not formally communicated what the suspension is for, whether it's paid or unpaid. Doesn't that say a lot about the organization?
This is going to be interesting. If they un-suspend him, I'm assuming he won't ever take the field. The fans have more or less been given the "moral" go-ahead from their GM to throw dangerous objects at him.
As far as scapegoats go, Bradley wasn't the worst player on the Cubs but outperforming most of that weak lineup is akin to damning with faint praise. Besides, if a manager can be scapegoated (Cecil Cooper), surely a player can be. It might be wrong in a moral sense but it's also a business. Bleacher bums get called a lot of things but I don't think they will be as eager to pay money for a right field ticket if they get lumped into the racist category.
John Rocker.
I disagreed with that one, too, but it is another example.
This was a cowardly, pandering act by a perennially inept and disingenuous GM. He needed a whipping boy to distract from his general Sabeanesque lack of plan, and the tempermental Milton showed up right on time. The sad thing is the insipid mainstream sports media will no doubt applaud Hendry for "running a tight ship", "putting the fans first", or some other emptyheaded cliche here. Codependent indeed.
I hope the union sues Hendry's rear off.
Anyway, many teams would've enjoyed getting to the playoffs in the last decade as often as the Cubs have, including Sabean's giants. Give Hendry a little credit. He's also taken the blame for past failings too.
Those circumstances themselves have been reported differently at various times through the year but currently COT's contract site has
2011 may become $12M club option with $2M buyout if:
Bradley has more than 75 days on DL in 2009, or
Bradley is on DL at end of 2009 season with specific injury and not on active roster by 4/15/2010
The term 'specific injury' isn't defined but there is an angle to this story that IT MAY HAVE BEEN IN THE CUB'S INTEREST TO DL BRADLEY INSTEAD OF SUSPEND HIM.
Coverage of that angle might have been more informative that blowharding about the press again.
Somehow I don't think the MLB and the Union would like that very much.
on the Bradley side, while unusual to be suspended for statements to the media (Sheehan says he similarly defended Rocker, too, for his media comments -- at some point being a contrarian defender of guys with bad reps as an attention-getting device becomes just silly, and not nearly as cool, radical, above-it-all as Sheehan seems to strut around thinking), clearly he was:
-one, not a good value on his contract, no matter what silliness Sheehan says about his supposed production (I think this is the first time I've read here that power is unimportant for a RFer -- maybe if you're Ichiro and you bring a lot else to the table).
-two, a bad teammate and the fact that he is never mourned by his mates no matter what club he leaves is indicative. No 'teamwork' doesn't win games, but guys do have to live together for months, and a plague on a club needs to produce if he doesn't become more of a bother and distraction than he's worth.
-three, teams are in the business of selling a product, not protecting players -- this is the Chicago Cubs we're talking about and the 'Friendly Confines' is their #1 product. Of course it's fictional etc, but in a rational world everyone stays home and gets a better view of the game on the HD tv, while drinking better beer and eating better food, all while saving money. Baseball is selling a product that there's a special connection between team and fans, and making Bradley a sacrificial lamb to reaffirm that commitment was probably a savvy business decision in the real, irrational, world. Not that seats would be empty next year at Wrigley, but fan goodwill needs to be curried, as in any business (of course, a good product helps, too, and winning would be even better than dumping Bradley, but....).
Let's try to get some confirmation. I'm not interested in rumor mongering but a lot of character issues would seem to be at stake. I also am a longtime Bradley apologist, because I think he's a smart guy who hates the media bs and the type of thinking/reactions it engenders.
If that's why Milton Bradley was suspended, we needed to hear it from Jim Hendry, not a comment on Rob Neyer's blog.
At the end of the day I have difficulty supporting Bradley because he obviously didn't want to be around anymore. Being suspended for two weeks to end the season really isn't much of a punishment regardless of the reason. I think Hendry's citing of poor performance is really just a cover for wanting to get Bradley out of the dugout and clubhouse where there was no single horrific incident that merited his removal.
One of them mentioned that he led the AL in OPS last year at .999 and that the Cubs would have been happy if he'd given them a .777 number this year. Too bad they didn't do their homework before making that comment, because Bradley's 2009 OPS is .775.
Bradley was right about one thing - there was a mike in his face everyday - as they press fought over each other to get THE BLOWUP.
Kudos to the Daily Herald for getting the story even if it did take the one writer who Bradley trusted to betray him.
Did Bradley play like %$&@ for the first 2 months? Certainly.
Did Bradley made some dumb comments and do stupid things? Yes.
But please don't defend the press on this one. They were out to play a game of GOTCHA from the word go and the prize was Bradley's scalp while the collateral winnings were numerous print stories and endless radio hours.
Game over.
It's amazing what Hendry has done to destroy the near future of the Cubs, without any payoff. It’s time for the new owners to look for a new GM.