The last time the Red Sox qualified for the World Series, they relied heavily on a star center fielder in his walk year. Yet they barely flinched two months after their 2013 championship when that star center fielder, Jacoby Ellsbury, immediately jumped to the rival Yankees.
Part of that drew from Boston’s gleeful disbelief at the Yankees’ massive overpay of $153 million over seven years for Ellsbury. The other part derived from belief — in Jackie Bradley Jr.
Nearly five years later, Bradley lovingly lugged his American League Championship Series Most Valuable Player trophy around Minute Maid Park, further validating the Red Sox’s faith.
“It’s very rewarding,” Bradley said about an hour after the Red Sox had topped the defending champion Astros 4-1 in ALCS Game 5 to secure the AL pennant by an identical 4-1 margin. “You always set out to do … everything that you can in order to stay up here and compete. Help win any way possible.
“It’s a lot of work. It doesn’t come easy. And I want to continue to work, perfect my craft and hopefully keep on winning.”
The Red Sox will count on him as they try to capture their ninth World Series title, starting Tuesday night with Game 1 at Fenway Park. Although he really has done more than his share already.
Always a defensive dynamo, Bradley shifted his perennially inconsistent bat into overdrive this past week, slashing .200/.400/.667 against the Astros’ vaunted pitching staff. In this seesaw battle that played closer than the final five-game result, Bradley delivered a pair of game-winning hits — a bases-clearing, third-inning double off Gerrit Cole in Game 2 and a two-run, sixth-inning homer off Josh James in Game 4. For good measure, he added an eighth-inning grand slam off Roberto Osuna in Game 3 that extended Boston’s advantage from 4-2 to 8-2.
As Baseball Prospectus’ Aaron Gleeman detailed on Twitter, Bradley has put together a 0.7 Win Probability Added — essentially a measure of how much a player contributes to his team’s likelihood of winning a game — through the first two rounds, tying him with the Astros’ George Springer for the best in baseball entering Friday night’s National League Championship Series Game 6.
“There’s nobody on this team that I can think of — in baseball — that deserves it more than Jackie,” said David Price, who enjoyed his own validation in Game 5 by pitching six shutout innings for the Red Sox. “Just, one, the player that he is and, two, more importantly, the person that he is. He continues to work. He continues to grind.
“He continues to push forward through everything that he has to go through. Watching him line out, hitting balls 100-plus miles an hour routinely this year and last year, to see him get that MVP award, to get those big hits, I’m so pumped for him.”
Ellsbury, you might remember, missed the entire 2018 season for the Yankees with myriad injuries and has two years left on his contract, which has proven to be quite the poor investment. Bradley fittingly has two years left before he’s eligible for free agency.
The 2013 champs, it’s clear, placed their disbelief and belief in the proper slots. They can re-emphasize that obvious point — rub it in, even — with four more wins.