Jackie Bradley Jr. turned the pitch he was looking for into a grand slam
"I was trying to see a pitch up in the zone that I could handle, and I got that pitch."
While Jackie Bradley Jr. waited for his turn at the plate, he watched Astros reliever Roberto Osuna plunk Brock Holt and Mitch Moreland in back-to-back at-bats. The Red Sox center fielder stepped into the batter’s box, watched two more Osuna pitches, then launched a grand slam into the right field seats.
The 8th-inning home run, Bradley Jr.’s second-career bases-clearing blast, came on the exact pitch he was looking for.
“They had been attacking me in all series long — in, down, kind of out of the strike zone — so I was trying to see a pitch up in the zone that I could handle, and I got that pitch,” he told reporters after Boston’s 8-2 win over Houston in Game 3 of the American League Championship Series.
Bradley Jr. recognized the importance of the hit that gave his team a six-run lead on the night and a 2-1 edge in the series. He noted runs are at a premium against the Astros pitching staff, adding the Red Sox “never feel like enough runs is going to be enough. So it was very, very special for us.”
In the regular season, the 28-year-old was 1 for 17 with the bases loaded. He’s stepped up his production in the past two games, knocking in three runs Sunday and another four with one swing of the bat Tuesday. He attributed his turnaround to simply “putting good swings on good pitches. That’s pretty much it.”
Bradley Jr. struggled to push his batting average above the .200 mark in the first few months of the season. He acknowledged slumps are going to happen, touting his absent fear of failure.
“I just don’t want to fail a lot. I want to fail less,” he said. “I want to be more consistent than I have been. So I’m just continuously working as hard as I can to continuously get better — and fail less.”
No one would accuse him of failing on Tuesday night.
