Bradley entered Sunday with an OPS+ -- meaning OPS as a percentage of the league average -- of 62. That's a horrible mark. How many players in the last 40 years, as rookies, had an OPS+ of 75 or worse (meaning 25 percent worse than league average) as rookies while striking out in at least one out of every five plate appearances?
There have been 29 such players. It's a group that includes Bradley -- along with the previously mentioned Kozma, Bourn, McCarty and Anderson -- along with another 24 players. There is one additional instance of a player who emerged from a dreadful rookie performance to become an offensive star: Carlos Gonzalez went from an overmatched rookie with the A's as a 22-year-old (.242/.273/.361, OPS+ of 71) to an All-Star and MVP candidate.
But beyond the success stories of Anderson, Gonzalez and Bourn, only one other player -- outfielder Rich Becker -- went from non-existent production as a rookie (.237/.303/.296, OPS+ of 57) to a solid major league career with an OPS+ of 90 or greater.
If one removes Bradley's fellow 2014 rookies from the group (Jonathan Schoop,
James Jones), there are 26 players in the Bradley class of unproductive rookies, with four players who offer optimism for both Bradley and the Sox that the center fielder can become a productive big leaguer. That's certainly better than no such precedents, but it's a low enough probability that the
Red Sox likely can't afford to repeat the risk they took this year, when they banked on Bradley's minor league track record in the absence of big league performance.