Let's Have a Talk About Bobby Bradley

Indians fans finally got what they wanted when the team traded Jake Bauers to the Mariners earlier this season. For starters, they got rid of Bauers, who was a black hole in this lineup. Secondly, Bobby Bradley was called up to the bigs to be the team's primary first basemen.

While Bradley got off to a scoring hot and matched Bauers' season-long production in just 13 ABs, he has cooled off significantly and is starting to form his own black hole in the Indians lineup.

Bobby By The Numbers

On the season, Bradley is slashing only .208/.315/.479, which is slightly better than league average. His OPS of .795 is above the league average of .722, but it is not by much as you can see.

"Oh, but he is only 25-years-old and has not played a seasons worth of games in his career"

Yeah, but let's be honest with ourselves, in his 59 career games played, he has slashed .201/.300/.450 with an OPS of .749. Just simply put, that is below average, and is not going to cut it for a fringe playoff (and I use that lightly) team. 

On a lighter note, let's look at some upside. First of all, his hot start was very welcoming and flashes Bradley's potential at the dish. 

Secondly, he has a max exit velocity of 114.2, which is in the top eight percent in the league. While his average exit velocity sits at 90.1, which is slightly below league average, we can see that he possess the raw power and strength to be a constant home run threat. 

Right now, Bradley is struggling. 

Would sending him down to Triple-A Columbus so he can mash balls out of Huntington Park serve any purpose? Not really, unless there is something severely wrong with his swing and needs to figure it out away from the Indians.

The Indians fell below .500 yesterday with a loss against the Blue Jays and are all but finished in terms of the Wild Card chase as teams like the Yankees, Blue jays, and the loser of the AL West start to pull away. Obviously, there are still two months to go on a run, but let's be real with ourselves, this team just isn't healthy or skilled enough right now.

Would keeping Bradley with the Indians and let him work it out in the majors be the best solution? Maybe, or it might kill his confidence if he continues to struggle. It is a good thing that I do not have to make these decisions, I just get to write about the people that make those decisions.

But one thing is for sure, Bradley is just not cutting it and the excitement that we had when he was called up is very quickly starting to diminish. I am not out on Bradley yet, but I need to see more production out of him before we can consider him a part of our future.