Red Sox to tender a contract to Jackie Bradley Jr.
The Sox still could explore trades involving Bradley.
The Red Sox won’t be turning Jackie Bradley Jr. loose on the open market – but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll be back in 2020.
In advance of Monday night’s deadline to tender contracts to arbitration-eligible players – a procedure that commits the team to paying the player for the coming year at a salary to be determined either through negotiation or, if an agreement can’t be reached, salary arbitration – a major league source said that the Red Sox will tender a contract to Bradley.
Evaluators on other teams speculated that the Red Sox might consider non-tendering Bradley – a decision that would have made him a free agent – at a time when his projected salary through arbitration could rise above $10 million. While Bradley’s defense has been consistently excellent, his uneven offensive performances – which yielded a .225/.317/.421 line with 21 homers, in line with a career .236/.317/.409 line – led to questions about whether the Sox might part ways with the centerfielder at a time when the team has a stated goal of trimming payroll by more than $30 million.
Had that occurred, some evaluators speculated, Bradley might have struggled to match his arbitration salary through free agency but likely would have fielded multi-year offers. The Sox made such speculation irrelevant by tendering Bradley.
That doesn’t ensure Bradley’s return next year, however. The Sox still could explore trades involving Bradley, and the potential interest in his services as a free agent suggests that there could also be a trade market for him – though with a return capped by the question of whether his salary might be large for his anticipated performance.
At the same time, it’s worth noting that Bradley’s 2019 numbers were dragged down by his early-season struggles in the wake of offseason swing adjustments, something that led to soaring swing-and-miss and strikeout rates through the first month and a half of the season. From May 20 through the end of the year, in 109 games, Bradley hit .252/.342/.504 with 21 homers. Over that stretch of more than two-thirds of the season, the 29-year-old underscored that he can be an extremely valuable player – albeit one for whom the career-long quest for consistency remains unfulfilled.
“I’m not satisfied,’’ Bradley said in the final days of the season. “I’m not where I want to be. I just feel like there’s still more.’’
Whether he gets to that desired point – and whether it happens in Boston – remains to be seen. But for now, there is clarity that Bradley won’t be leaving the Red Sox as a free agent prior to 2020.
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