SB Nation - Zach Day

Fire Everyone! - Carl Willis

Jay — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 16:40:12 -0000

"Basically, Justersonster, you only get to be good for one year as long as I'm your coach. So which year is it going to be?"

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This is the third installment in a 12-part series.

The case is simple: Our pitching stinks, fire the pitching coach.

While we've seen consistently good-to-great lineups for the past four years or so, our rotation has gone from a wonderfully deep collection of quality pitchers to an utter wasteland. As for our bullpens, the words "historically bad" have been used — without hyperbole — to describe four of the last six.

In fairness to Willis, a recap is in order of some truly great pitching Indians fans have seen under his watch:

CC Sabathia (2003), Jake Westbrook (2004) and Cliff Lee (2005) all emerged as young quality starters in Willis' first three seasons with the club.
Veterans Brian Anderson (2003) and Scott Elarton (2004) had solid bounce-back seasons.
Injury-plagued Kevin Millwood (2005) won the AL ERA title in his only season with Willis, and Carl Pavano (2009) returned from a four-year hiatus to become an above-average starter.
Rafael Betancourt emerged as one of the few consistently good middle relievers in the game.
The 2005 staff led the league in ERA and allowed just 3.96 runs per game. The club essentially made it through the season using only five starters, and it was essentially just as steady and stable in 2006.
The 2005 bullpen in particular led the league in ERA and WHIP by significant margins and might have been the best in club history.
Sabathia emerged as a true ace late in the 2005 season, producing Cy Young-caliber seasons in 2007 and 2008.
Fausto Carmona (2007) produced a Cy Young-caliber season while barely more than a rookie.
Cliff Lee (2008) produced a dominant, historic season, including a unanimous Cy Young award, and one of the most remarkable comeback stories the game has ever seen.

It is an impressive list of accomplishments — which just makes it all the more amazing that there's a good case for firing the guy. On a macro level, the bullpen has been the runaway leading culprit in the trademark early-season collapses of the Wedge era. If it weren't for those four horrendous bullpens, in fact, there likely would never have been any talk whatsoever about Wedge's teams starting slow.

Despite many seemingly fine internal candidates, he has never been able to cultivate a closer. Jason Davis and Fernando Cabrera withered away to nothing, and Jensen Lewis seems to be following not far behind them. A long list of pitchers have arrived in Cleveland ready to compete and even dominate — Carmona, Davis, Cabrera, Sowers, Perez, Lewis — and then, at some point before they hit the two-year mark, they just lose it. Too many of the Indians' best young pitchers seem to forget how to pitch completely, or they lose the ability to do what made them successful. And when they forget, Willis seems utterly unable to remind them.

Time after time, we see pitchers shipped down to the minors to reconstruct their games. This is in part a practical necessity, but at some point the question must be asked: Isn't the pitching coach supposed to help the pitchers, you know, pitch better?

You may not be surprised to learn that, at least from an outside perspective, Willis' minor league résumé is almost vanishingly thin. Looking at the rosters for 1997 Watertown, 1998 Burlington and 1999 Columbus (Ga.), there is an amazing lack of major league talent. Sabathia made eight starts for those clubs as he breezed through the minors, and Tim Drew and Ryan Drese each made a few starts for them. But as for the pitchers who spent significant time with Willis in the low minors, however, not a single one ever had a significant big-league career. The 2000 Aeros allow Willis to claim some credit for Danys Baez's development, and he did coach Zach Day for eight starts. Think about that: eight starts with Zach Day is Willis' second most impressive work product for those four seasons in the minors.

Willis moved up to Buffalo with Wedge for the 2001 and 2002 seasons, and he moved up to Cleveland with Wedge in 2003. Naturally, Willis couldn't help but work with future major leaguers once he was working in Triple-A, but even so, the list is pretty thin. He had 12 starts with then-prospect Westbrook and another eight with Lee. Other than that, Willis' minor league highlights are led by names like Tim Drew, Mike Bacsik and Sean DePaula.

In fairness, it was this exact, astonishing dearth of talent that led the Indians to blow up the team in 2002, and in no way am I suggesting that it's Willis' fault that there was so little talent there to work with. Still, after six years in the minors, you would hope that there would be more tangible things to point to — some pitcher, anyone, who developed into a good major leaguer, largely under Willis' tutelage — but that pitcher doesn't seem to exist. It seems that Willis owes his presence in the majors largely if not entirely to the judgment of Eric Wedge, and one shudders to consider what qualities Willis had that Wedge felt made him the best guy to be the Indians pitching coach. Is Carl Willis a grinder? Was Wedge hoping that Willis would "run into one?" Is he, in fact, the Ryan Garko of pitching coaches?

Even Willis' accomplishments fade under closer inspection. Sabathia is a unique and protean talent who arrived as a reasonably effective starting pitcher in the majors at the age of 20. You would expect an exceptional young talent like him to progress somewhat in his first few years, to have occasional setbacks, and eventually to emerge as one of the game's top pitchers. Willis deserves credit for helping Sabathia fulfill his potential, but it did take six years for it to happen, and when they started their fourth season together in 2006, it still hadn't happened. Durability aside, it would be a stretch to say that Sabathia exceeded expectations once Willis arrived.

Lee presents a similar mixed bag, as a prospect whose ceiling was always seen as a number-one starter. Again, the natural tendency is to credit Willis for some portion of Lee's miraculous rise from the gutter in 2008. The problem comes when you ask, who was Lee's pitching coach when his career careened off into that gutter in the first place? Who was his coach when his very fine 2005 season turned into a thoroughly mediocre 2006, followed by 2007, when Lee fell entirely off the depth chart? Did the Indians, on balance, get as much out of Lee as was expected, from 2005 through 2008? Even if the answer is "yes," Willis' work with Lee doesn't seem to be an overwhelming positive on the balance sheet.

And then there's the Boys of 2007: Carmona, Jensen Lewis and Rafael Perez. Carmona's odd odyssey in 2006 is well documented, but he seemed to arrive in 2007 as an Instant Ace. I'd like to give Willis some credit for this, but when a veteran slugger says Carmona's power sinker is like a bad hangover, it's not clear how much credit can be given to coaching. Lewis and Perez each arrived mid-season in 2007, propelled by months of dominance in the high minors, and they kept right on going, dominating AL hitters all the way down the stretch. Lewis has struggled to pitch consistently in 2008 and 2009. Perez was a solid reliever in 2008 and has been arguably the worst reliever in the major leagues this season. Both relievers collapsed despite not having any notable injury problems. As for Carmona, he may well be the single most brutally disappointing player Indians fans have followed this decade.

Among the three pitchers, these three facts seem consistent:

They arrived and performed at the very high level portended by their track records.
Willis played no significant role in their development as prospects.
They have all totally collapsed since their first full seasons in the majors.

Without breakout performances from Perez and Lewis in 2007, we'd be talking about four historically awful bullpens in four consecutive seasons, rather than in just three seasons out of the last four. Following the 2006 debacle, the Indians spent relatively heavily on bullpen options, bringing in Hernandez, Fultz, and Borowski for 2007. Masa Kobayashi was brought in to fortify what was viewed as promising core in 2008, which turned into another debacle. Topping prior efforts, the Indians acquired Kerry Wood and Joe Smith for 2009 — once again hoping to bolster a solid core of Betancourt, Perez and Lewis — and the Triple-A club was stocked with solid minor league free agents and a few dominating prospects, led by Tony Sipp. Yet once again, the bullpen crumbled completely and tanked the season early.

Reliever performances are maddeningly hard to project — functionally impossible in fact — but it should be clear at this point that small samples alone cannot explain the wild swings in performance for pitchers like Lewis and Perez. No scout would claim they are the same pitchers they were in 2007, or that Carmona is. At one point, they knew how to pitch successfully, and now, they don't. One wonders if within the next few years, their careers will become just as insubstantial as those who came before them, like Davis and Cabrera.

If the bullpen is any significant part of Willis' responsibilities, then his performance must be considered a failure at this point. The best we can say for the man's tenure with the Indians is that for the most elite pitching talent, in their prime, he has helped them to achieve their potential, and he has helped a few rehabbed retreads put together some nice make-good seasons. Both of these types of contributions have been very useful to the club. For pitchers who were not already established, however, and not elite talents coming out of the minors, the overall pitching productivity under Willis has been simply abysmal.

One more factor worth considering is the availability of Leo Mazzone, the well-known pitching coach for the 1990s Atlanta Braves. In addition to coaching three pitchers to six Cy Young awards, Mazzone is also the subject of a comparative statistical study that showed that pitchers coached by him tended to lower their ERA by an average of half a run. Neither of these facts are conclusive as to Mazzone's true ability, but then, nothing ever is when it comes to coaches. We can't know for sure how much good or harm Willis has done, or how much of the Braves' immense pitching success was owed to Mazzone. Clubs have to make decisions in the absence of real certainty, with coaches just as much as players.

It may seem callous (and even "un-Shapiro") to kick Willis to the curb just because someone better is available. Maybe it is callous. It's also the kind of thing that organizations do when they're serious about competing. We could badly use a coach with a knack for turning fringy pitchers into decent major league starters and relievers — and by "we" I mean "Jeremy Sowers and David Huff." Mazzone has shown that knack, and Willis hasn't. Under the current leadership, if the Indians have the worst bullpen in the majors next season, not one person will be able to claim surprise. Maybe Willis has done nothing to cause those disasters, but he certainly hasn't prevented them. Whatever his accomplishments here, it's time to fire the pitching coach.

WAR Lords of the Diamond (Center Field)

Jabberwocky — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:04:49 -0000

More photos » by David Zalubowski - AP

Spilly makes the cut....find out who joins him below the fold.

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Previous Sessions in the WAR Lords Series:

C (with methodology) I 1B I 2B I 3B I SS I LF

For the next step in my ongoing quest to quantify the greatest Rockies ever by position, I'm revealing the best performers at the center field position.

Once again, I'm using Sean Smith's historical WAR database (not Fangraphs) to compile these numbers (with a big assist to the fabulous Baseball Reference; here is the glossary of the terms Smith uses and an explanation of how WAR is calculated.

Center Field, according to Tom Tango's positional adjustment scale, is given a rank of +2.5, ranking center field as the most difficult outfield position to play defensively--which makes sense given the extra amount of territory they are expected to cover.

Center fielders are expected to not only to catch fly balls but also to deny baserunners advancing to an extra base. Particularly desired traits for center fielders include speed, instincts (depth perception and tracking skills), and quickness to react to the ball--not to mention the best combination of any outfielder of speed and arm strength/accuracy. The center fielder is also the captain of the outfield, orchestrating the action to avoid imminent collisions.

Due to these defensive requirements, center fielders usually possess great speed and a strong arm, but also often hit less for power at the plate. As a result, these speedy players are often thrust into the leadoff role regardless of their ability to work counts or hit the ball due to their speed.

The defensive capabilities of a center fielder are especially important--and are especially taxed--in the cavernous outfield of Coors Field. As such, most of the players that the Rockies have trotted out to center have fit into this defense-first, speedy mold.

As for the Rockies, center field is one of the weaker positions that I've measured in this series. It has a high turnover (I ranked 22 players and none of them played longer than four years with the club) and therefore a low production rate--similar to but slightly better than Colorado's catchers. A potential reason for this low production rate might be that defensive metrics haven't quite solved the Coors Field center field conundrum--Rockies centerfielders consistently post horrible defensive rankings on advanced defensive metrics.

Interestingly, only one of the five players that lead the franchise in games played at the position even makes the top five here (largely because Ellis Burks was categorized as a left fielder). This list will probably surprise you.

Center Fielders

Note: most if not all of these players played multiple outfield positions with the Rockies. I have placed these players in this category subjectively on the basis of where I believe they provided the greatest impact to the Rockies. In case of an average rank tie, career WAR is the tiebreaker.

1. Juan Pierre

Career WAR: 3.0 (1st)
Top Three Seasons: 3.0, 2000-2002 (1st)
Top Season: 2.4, 2001 (1st)
Average Rank: 1

Juan Pierre tops the list of Colorado centerfielders, largely on the strength of a fine 2001 season. He was drafted in the 13th round of the 1998 draft out of South Alabama and he moved quickly through the minor leagues, making his major league debut in August 2000.

In 2001, his first full season, a 23 year-old Pierre batted .327/.378/.415/.353 with 46 SBs. Pierre's MO with the Rockies was his low walk and strikeout rates (41 & 29 respectively in 683 PAs in 2001) as well as his good range on defense (TZ of 9 in Coors). If it weren't for his famously poor arm (-5 OArm), he'd fit the Coors CF mold to a T. In all, Pierre produced 2.4 WAR in 2001, one of just two above league-average seasons by a Rockies center fielder.

After a disappointing 2002 campaign (0.4 WAR), the 24 year-old Pierre was the currency necessary for the Rockies to rid themselves of Mike Hampton and His Contract for a trade package from the Florida Marlins, including Charles Johnson and Preston Wilson, which wasn't a bad deal when one considers the salary relief Colorado got.

Since then, Pierre earned a World Series ring with the Marlins in 2003 and cashed in on a 3.3 WAR 2006 with the Cubs to receive a 5 year, $44 million contract from the Dodgers to be their fourth outfielder. Let's be happy that the Rockies never overpaid for Pierre's services.

2. Willy Taveras

Career WAR: 2.8 (2nd)
Top Three Seasons: 2.8, 2007-2008 (2nd)
Top Season: 1.9, 2007 (3rd)
Average Rank: 2.33

Well, this ranking certainly surprised me. For as much deserved crap as Willy T has gotten on this site over the last two years, he remains a phenomenal defensive player with elite speed--traits that were perfect for Coors Field. Unfortunately, Taveras doesn't really possess the patience and hitting gene to go with his prodigious athletic gifts. The upside of this equation is that with even offense that approaches a mediocre level a player with Taveras' skill set becomes a valuable one.

The Rockies acquired the 25 year old Taveras after the 2006 season in the famous Jason Jennings trade and he responded with an excellent 2007. Willy T hit .320/.367/.382/.344 with 33 SBs (worth 1.8 WAR) and helped to propel the Rockies to the World Series with a fantastic diving catch in the NLCS.

Unfortunately, Taveras could not sustain this offensive success (he benefitted from a .371 BABIP in 2007) in 2008, producing one of the worst-ever offensive seasons by a full-time Rockie starter (-30 batting runs), but his excellent baserunning (68 steals leading to 12 runs above average) and defense (TZ of 5) actually balanced out his poor batting line in the end (0.9 WAR). This wasn't enough to save Taveras from being non-tendered after 2008--but he suckered in the Cincinnati Reds into taking him for 2 years and $6.25 million.

3. Ryan Spilborghs

Career WAR: 1.7 (3rd)
Top Three Seasons: 1.7, 2006-2008 (3rd)
Top Season: 2.1, 2007 (2nd)
Average Rank: 2.67

While his function with the team has varied often throughout his four year career and he is now mostly a corner outfielder, Spilly has started more games in center field than anywhere else. Spilborghs was drafted by the Rockies in the 7th round of the 2002 draft out of UCSB and made his debut in July 2005 (the only game he played in 2005).

Spilly's 2006 and 2008 campaigns were actually found by Smith to have negative value due to poor performances in defensive metrics, but his 2007 season was good for second-best in franchise history by a CF. In 300 PA, Spilborghs hit .299/.363/.485/.366 with 11 homers and a good fielding season (TZ of 8).

Deciding what to do with Spilborghs will be an interesting topic of discussion for the Rockies' front office after this season. The 30 year old Spilborghs will be entering just his first year of arbitration eligibility, so he has some value to opposing teams, but the Rockies could opt to trade the more pricey (and less productive, but that's another article) Brad Hawpe and keep the cheaper outfield.

4. Mike Kingery

Career WAR: 1.6 (T-4th)
Top Three Seasons: 1.6, 1994-1995 (4th)
Top Season: 1.7, 1994 (5th)
Average Rank: 4.33

Ah, Mike Kingery, a man who I have irrationally fond baseball memories of.

I'm unsure of his relation to the Rockies' radio play-by-play man, but Mike played two seasons for the Rockies in the pre-humidor era after signing with them as a free agent as Ellis Burks insurance in the twilight of his career--one at Mile High Stadium and one at Coors. His 1994, in which he hit .349/.402/.532/.392 in 346 PA, was a career year offensively (14 BRAA) and led to 1.7 WAR. Kingery was worth -0.1 WAR in a poor 1995 and was not re-signed.

5. Tom Goodwin

Career WAR: 1.6 (T-4th)
Top Three Seasons: 1.6, 2000 (T-4th)
Top Season: 1.6, 2000 (6th)
Average Rank: 4.67

Tom Goodwin (not to be confused with Curtis Goodwin, who also played center field for the Rockies) only played 91 games in 2000 for the Rockies after signing as a free agent before being traded at the deadline to the Dodgers in exchange for a package headlined by Todd Hollandsworth. However, the 31 year-old Goodwin maximized his time with the Rockies (which made him a valuable enough trade asset for the Dodgers to want him).

He hit .271/.368/.394/.350 for the Rockies in what was one of the finer seasons in his 13 year career.

6. Preston Wilson

Career WAR: 1.4 (6th)
Top Three Seasons: 1.4, 2003-2004 (6th)
Top Season: 1.8, 2003 (4th)
Average Rank: 5.33

I made this list six names long to include Wilson, because not only did he play regularly for the Rockies for the equivalent of two seasons but also because there's a large dropoff in quality after him.

Wilson, acquired with Charles Johnson in the Juan Pierre-Mike Hampton trade, had his best Colorado year when he was healthy in 2000, hitting .282/.343/.537/.374 with 36 HRs, a league-leading 141 RBIs, and a place on the All-Star roster.

After an injury marred 2004, Wilson was losing steam in 2005 while making $12.5 million. This fact was astutely recognized by Dan O'Dowd, who traded Wilson to the Nationals for Zach Day, J.J. Davis, and cash (essentially a salary dump). Had Wilson kept up his 2003 pace and stayed healthy, he would probably have led this list.

Others of Note

These players started for the Rockies in center field for the majority of at least one year: Cory Sullivan (-1.4), Darryl Hamilton (0.5), Quinton McCracken (0.6), Alex Cole (-0.1)

Bottom of the barrel: Choo Freeman (-1.5), Steve Finley (-1.1)

Next week: Right Fielders

The Case For Milton Bradley

Al — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 14:41:34 -0000

Since the reports by WGN's David Kaplan last night that the Cubs may be "close" to announcing a multi-year deal with controversial outfielder Milton Bradley, I thought, given that you all know my opposition to this move, I'd at least try to make a case as to why this might work out OK.

photo via imagecache2.allposters.com

Milton Bradley first came on the major league radar when he was playing Double-A ball for the Harrisburg Senators in 2000, the Montreal Expos' affiliate in the Eastern League. He hit .329/.388/.526 with 12 homers in 87 games -- not too far off from his production with the Rangers in 2008, extrapolated to the 126 games he played for Texas last year. Traded to Cleveland in an ill-advised deal for the long-gone Zach Day, he never did break into the Indians' lineup full-time -- the most games he played there was 101 in 2003. A lot of that was due to injuries, and that's the first thing I worry about when it comes to Gameboard (seriously -- didn't this family know about the game company when they named him?). Here's a list of all his injuries -- and in the box below, I eliminated everything in his transaction report except injury-related missed time, beginning with his first one-year, major league deal with Cleveland:

Sep 19, 2008: Missed 2 games (left wrist injury).
Sep 16, 2008: Left wrist injury, day-to-day.
Sep 12, 2008: Missed 2 games (wrist injury).
Sep 6, 2008: Wrist injury, day-to-day.
Aug 18, 2008: Missed 2 games (illness).
Aug 16, 2008: Illness, day-to-day.
Aug 10, 2008: Missed 5 games (strained left quadriceps).
Aug 5, 2008: Strained left quadriceps, day-to-day.
Aug 4, 2008: Missed 5 games (quadricep injury).
Jul 30, 2008: Quadricep injury, day-to-day.
Jul 12, 2008: Missed 1 game (left knee injury).
Jul 11, 2008: Left knee injury, day-to-day.
Jun 24, 2008: Missed 1 game (strained left quadriceps).
Jun 22, 2008: Strained left quadriceps, day-to-day.
Jun 20, 2008: Missed 2 games (quadricep injury).
Jun 18, 2008: Quadricep injury, day-to-day.
May 31, 2008: Missed 1 game (dizziness).
May 30, 2008: Dizziness, day-to-day.
May 16, 2008: Missed 2 games (right shoulder injury).
May 13, 2008: Right shoulder injury, day-to-day.
May 2, 2008: Missed 1 game (hamstring).
May 1, 2008: Hamstring, day-to-day.
Sep 24, 2007: Torn ACL, sidelined indefinitely.
Sep 21, 2007: Missed 12 games (right oblique muscle strain).
Sep 11, 2007: Right oblique muscle strain, day-to-day.
Aug 8, 2007: Missed 4 games (hamstring).
Aug 4, 2007: Hamstring, day-to-day.
Jul 7, 2007: Missed 8 games (oblique injury).
Jul 1, 2007: Oblique injury, 15-day DL (retroactive to June 21).
Jun 20, 2007: Missed 16 games (calf injury).
Jun 8, 2007: Calf injury, 15-day DL (retroactive to June 3rd).
Jun 3, 2007: Calf injury, day-to-day.
May 30, 2007: Missed 14 games (hamstring).
May 23, 2007: Hamstring, 15-day DL (retroactive to May 15th).
May 22, 2007: Hamstring, day-to-day.
May 19, 2007: Missed 4 games (hamstring).
May 17, 2007: Hamstring, day-to-day.
May 11, 2007: Missed 15 games (hamstring).
Apr 23, 2007: Hamstring, 15-day DL.
Apr 20, 2007: Missed 6 games (hamstring).
Apr 13, 2007: Hamstring, day-to-day.
Sep 1, 2006: Missed 1 game (ankle injury).
Aug 30, 2006: Ankle injury, day-to-day.
Jul 14, 2006: Missed 20 games (shoulder injury).
Jun 20, 2006: Shoulder injury, 15-day DL.
Jun 19, 2006: Shoulder injury, day-to-day.
Jun 6, 2006: Missed 36 games (right knee injury).
May 7, 2006: Right knee injury, 15-day DL (retroactive to April 27th).
Apr 27, 2006: Right knee injury, day-to-day.
Oct 2, 2005: Missed 38 games to the end of the regular season (Torn left Patella Tendon).
Sep 2, 2005: Transferred from the 15-day DL to the 60-day DL (torn left Patella Tendon).
Aug 25, 2005: Torn left Patella Tendon, 15-day DL (retroactive to August 23rd).
Aug 23, 2005: Knee injury, day-to-day.
Jul 23, 2005: Missed 47 games (finger injury).
Jun 3, 2005: Finger injury, 15-day DL (retroactive to May 30).
May 31, 2005: Finger injury, day-to-day.
Sep 29, 2004: Suspended by the Los Angeles Dodgers for the remainder of the season.
Aug 13, 2004: Missed 1 game (hamstring).
Aug 12, 2004: Hamstring, day-to-day.
Jun 30, 2004: Missed 4 games (suspension).
Jun 3, 2004: Suspended by MLB for 4 games.
Jun 1, 2004: Missed 2 games (ankle injury).
May 31, 2004: Ankle injury, day-to-day.
May 4, 2004: Missed 3 games (ankle injury).
Apr 30, 2004: Ankle injury, day-to-day.
Aug 29, 2003: Missed 46 games to the end of the regular season (back injury).
Aug 15, 2003: Back injury, 15-day DL.
Aug 10, 2003: Back injury, day-to-day.
May 8, 2003: Missed 12 games (strained right hamstring).
Apr 26, 2003: Strained right hamstring, 15-day DL (retroactive to April 23).
Apr 23, 2003: Strained right hamstring, day-to-day.
Apr 19, 2003: Missed 1 game (hamstring).
Apr 18, 2003: Hamstring, day-to-day.
Aug 30, 2002: Missed 16 games (appendicitis).
Aug 14, 2002: Appendicitis, 15-day DL (retroactive to August 12th).
Jun 4, 2002: Missed 29 games (eye Contusion).
May 2, 2002: Eye Contusion, 15-day DL.
Apr 17, 2002: Missed 4 games (right quadricep).
Apr 11, 2002: Right quadricep, day-to-day.
Mar 1, 2002: Agreed to terms with the Cleveland Indians to a one-year contract.

OK, I left two short suspensions in that list, one by his team (the Dodgers), one MLB suspension. That's a reeeeeaaallly long list of injury-missed time, wouldn't you say? In between those injuries, Bradley has produced, particularly last year, when he put up a 163 OPS+ and led the AL in on-base percentage with .438. That's something that I found appealing when I put the case for Adam Dunn on this site last week -- and if Bradley, who has shown good plate discipline since he became a major league regular several years ago, could keep that up as a Cub, that makes him a fine addition to a lineup that exhibited that sort of patience last year, partly, I would argue, due to the influence of Kosuke Fukudome, who led the team in walks with 81 even while slumping the whole second half.

Bradley drew 80 walks while missing 36 games. If we knew he could stay healthy for the entire season -- something he has not done in the last six years -- I'd say he'd be worth the signing, even with the rest of the baggage he brings. You can't ignore this baggage; the smiling photo above sometimes turns into this:

via cache.daylife.com

And this:

via msnbcmedia.msn.com

And this:

via math.berkeley.edu

And this bizarre sequence, which might have cost the Padres a playoff spot in 2007:

via www.rotorob.com

via graphics.boston.com

via i.a.cnn.net

I'm trying not to make that big a deal out of these incidents. But they cannot help. In some cases (the San Diego incident) they have led to injury -- the knee injury that he suffered that day had to rob him of much of his speed (he stole only five bases in 2008 and played only 19 games in right field, the position the Cubs would want him to play). It's the injuries more than the anger that I worry about. If you're going to pay a free agent like this the money he's going to be asking for (likely in the 3-year, $30 million range), you've got to make certain that you're going to get fulltime production out of him. What's the point of paying that much money and having him out for a third of the season? That would mean that someone like Joey Gathright is going to get far more at-bats than any of us would like.

By many accounts, Bradley has been a good teammate and well-liked in the clubhouses he has inhabited. That's a positive thing; if he can be just "one of the guys", and keep the temper under control, and avoid that long list of injuries -- there is no doubt that when healthy, he can and does produce. I realize that this "case for" doesn't really read that way, and I'm still leery of the Cubs signing him. I still think there may be better alternatives, including Dunn and Bobby Abreu (who has played 150 or more games for 11 straight years). If the Cubs do sign him, I'll be rooting for him to stay healthy, calm and productive.