Chicago Media No Fan of Milton Bradley

A day after Cubs signing leaks, the two papers seem none too pleased

By EAMONN BRENNAN

Updated 10:44 AM CST, Wed, Jan 7, 2009

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Milton Bradley is a flashpoint. An argument-starter. One of the handful of guys in Major League Baseball who has, in the recent past, been able to act like a jerk and still have teams vying for his considerable services. In our brief piece about the Bradley signing yesterday, we made sure to make mention of Bradley's occasionally weird, fiery history; to not do so is to ignore a part of who Milton Bradley is.

That said, the other part is talent. He's a really, really talented baseball player. Oft-injured, yes, but mercurially, incredibly talented. So it was more than disappointing to see none of the Chicago papers mention that talent in anything more than passing fashion yesterday. Instead, as FanHouse's Pat Lackey compiled today, the Sun-Times and the Trib seemed less than enthused about the whole thing:

It's four in the Sun-Times (one, two, three, four), one in the Tribune, plus a blog comment section full of complaining readers and TWO (one, two) recaps of his "incidents." OK, so there are plenty of people telling everyone what's bad about signing Milton Bradley, actually excessively so. But shouldn't someone be mentioning that since 2003, his worst OPS+ is 108? That while his last two seasons were injury-shortened, his OBP was above .400 in both years? That he's a pretty good fielding outfielder, especially in right field where the Cubs will use him? That holy effing crap, Kosuke Fukudome had a .649 OPS after June 15th and even if Bradley only plays 120 games, he improves a ton on that?

Yes, there should. Of course, most mainstream folks -- especially here in Chicago -- have been slow to adapt to using statistics more advanced than RBI's and home runs. Often, the baseball conversation gets bogged down in who is a better "character" guy, who has a better "clubhouse presence," whose heart is bigger and whose grit is grittier.

It's standard baseball-talk, but it obscures the value of a player like Bradley by getting too bogged down in the things we can't tangibly see. Things like his "heart." Like whether he'll be a team player in an almost entirely individual sport. Like whether his numbers actually are worth worrying about, given his scary home/road splits last year. Like whether an injured, surly Bradley is better than a friendly, horrible Fukudome.

Asking the character questions -- that's fine. That's something. But forgetting about actual performance, or oversimplying that performance, doesn't do readers any good. And people wonder why Baseball Prospectus is so popular.