We all know his massive struggles with the bat. But he's been so incredibly good in the field, and also very good on the base paths, that he still has quite a bit of value to the Red Sox.
Runs above average (fangraphs):
- Offense: -14.4
- Defense: +16.1
WAR
- Fangraphs: +1.5
- B-ref: +1.8
- ESPN: +1.8
At roughly $5.5 million per WAR, that puts Bradley's value at around $9 million. Now, we know that nobody would pay him that much right now, which means he's actually providing the Red Sox with considerable surplus value, despite his terrible hitting production.
If the rest of the offense was doing what it was supposed to do, you could easily live with him in CF with no worries. In fact, I'd *still* keep him there. Work all offseason and spring training and let him keep rolling. Unless I thought that time in AAA would "fix" him, which I'm not sure about right now.
His defense has been so very, very good that it enables him to provide good value despite the bad bat.
For some context, looking at ESPN stats and sorting all MLB CFs by WAR, Bradley comes in 18th. Here is a group of CFs that Bradley is out-WARing despite worse offensive numbers (I think these numbers are before last night's game):
Bradley: 324 ab, .216/.288/.296/.584, +1.8 WAR
Crisp: 296 ab, .270/.372/.412/.784, +1.8 WAR
A. Jackson: 402 ab, .271/.331/.388/.719, +1.6 WAR
Santana: 212 ab, .307/.351/.467/.818, +1.6 WAR
Fowler: 285 ab, .270/.377/.396/.774, +1.2 WAR
Revere: 403 ab, .313/.331/.372/.703, +0.5 WAR
He's only 0.7 WAR behind Ellsbury, of all people.
The point is that he's actually been at least an average starting CF, when everything is taken into account. And an average quality starting CF making the league minimum is a pretty nice thing to have.