Milton Bradley's Perfection

(Editor's note: For some ungodly reason, Mr. SKIA has been sitting on this post for nearly two weeks, completely unwilling to write the last few sentences until now. Deadbeat.)

Wait. What? The Cubs are still playing? Really?

Well, at least all of them but this guy.

So the Milton Bradley saga is over, for this season at least. Bradley's deal, which basically no one thought was a good idea at the time, is looking even worse now. Which prompted this article and its accompanying poll:


My vote was unintentionally shown in the capture. So why did I vote for Wallace? Football contracts aren't fully guaranteed, meaning the Bears were able to weasel out of Muhammad's deal after three seasons for significantly less than the $30 million. I'm not a big enough hockey fan to quantify exactly how bad the Gilmour deal was, but I have a hard time believing it'll be any worse than the one the Hawks just gave to Mr. Here Comes (12 Years of Shoulder) Trouble. And while the Navarro deal (4 years, $20 million, for a 25-43 record) was a terrible return for what was a ton of cash at the time (1997) 1. I don't care about the White Sox and 2. While it was a lot of money then, it can't compare to the signing of a glorified roll player for three times the dollars just nine years later. Plus, Wallace basically cost the Bulls very nearly the full $60 million for just two seasons; to get rid of him they had to take back Larry Hughes -- who the Bulls paid around $14 million to stay away from the team last year -- and to get rid of Hughes, they had to take back Tim Thomas, who's been bought out, and Jerome James, who's injured and unlikely to play another NBA game. Additionally, the Bulls signing of Wallace made (the younger and cheaper) Tyson Chandler (supposedly) expendable, and the organization basically gave Chandler away to the Hornets to get out from under his own (supposedly) onerous contract. With the salary cap in basketball -- not to mention the luxury tax -- an atrocious contract like Wallace's really, really hurts.

But apparently after the latest Bradley dust-up, not many people in Chicago agree with me:


So why didn't I vote for Bradley, who basically 3/4 of Chicago fans* said was the worst? Because not only is Bradley not the worst ever free-agent signing in Chicago, he's not even the worst one in the history of the Cubs. Or the worst one still on the Cubs.

That honor goes to Alfonso Soriano.

* Let's be honest. It's doubtful that a non-Cubs fan would be reading the article in order to find the poll in the first place, so it's really just Cubs fans voting, not a random sampling of the city's fans.

I suppose I should admit that it all depends on how you define signing. To me, signing is part and parcel with the contract that's been signed. Therefore the player with the worst contract is the worst signing. However, if you just view signing to mean acquisition, then Bradley's is perhaps the worst in Cubs history (though still not worse than Wallace's, which was for a year more and twice the dollars). While the mere thought of Soriano's contract exacerbates my GERD, his acquisition, for the short term, at least appeared to pay dividends. The year before they signed Soriano, the Cubs finished in last place at 66-96, the third-worst record in all of baseball; in the first two years of his deal, the Cubs won back-to-back division titles. Sure, he was just one (overpaid) piece, but Soriano's signing didn't look all that bad to the casual observer.

Meanwhile, Bradley was signed immediately following the second of those division titles, and in his first season the Cubs are 10 games out of first place. Not only has Bradley's production not met expectations -- while his malcontentedness has -- but the Cubs also jettisoned popular team player / glue guy Mark De Rosa in order to free up the cash to ink him. Bad times all around.

Still, I can't get over the disparity of the contracts.

If the Cubs want to extricate themselves from Bradley's deal -- and I mean just flat dump him, washing their hands of the entire situation -- it would mean that they essentially had given him a 1-year, $30 million contract. Sure that's a horrible return for corner outfielder who played slightly below-average defense and posted a 100 OPS+ (exactly league average) while being a general stick-in-the-mud. But starting with this season -- one in which Soriano's OPS, by the way, is just about 50 points less than Bradley's, which includes a 75-point gap in OBP -- the Cubs are on the hook for six years and... oh no, the reflux... $106 million. That's one hundred and six million dollars. Meaning if you make $100,000 a year (which is considered a pretty decent living, by the way), by the year 3069 you would have earned as much as the Cubs will shell out to Soriano between this season and 2014.

I'm guessing Alfonso Soriano loves Milton Bradley. Because without him, Soriano would be Bradley. That is, he'd be the target of all the fans ire. Instead, Soriano's basically gotten a free pass this year, despite the fact that his OBP is 75 points lower than Bradley's. And his defense, incidentally, is actually much worse than Bradley's, as their UZR150's look like this: Soriano, -13.7; Bradley, -4.3. Using fangraphs.com value calculations, Soriano's actually been worse than replacement level, and has a value of negative-$3.9 million. Bradley (due mostly to that high OBP) has a value of $5.3 million. Now of course, that doesn't quantify the disruption factor, the negative vibe, and everything else. But considering it would cost the Cubs a lump sum payment of $21 million to drop Bradley right now, while Soriano -- the significantly less productive player -- would cost $90 million, I'd say the Soriano signing is far, far worse.

Shifting gears, I want to get back to what Bradley actually said (most recently, at least) to trigger the suspension. From the Daily Herald:

"It's just not a positive environment. I need a stable, healthy, enjoyable environment. There's too many people everywhere in your face with a microphone asking the same questions repeatedly. Everything is just bashing you. You got out there and you play harder than anybody on the field and never get credit for it. It's just negativity.

"And you understand why they haven't won in 100 years here, because it's negative. It's what it is."

Asked whether he was talking about the fans, the media or even the Cubs organization, he replied: "It's everything. It's everybody."

You know what? Bradley is absolutely right -- the atmosphere is extremely negative. Fans (and I'm including myself here) and the media (and I'm not including myself here) are exceptionally pessimistic and always expect the worst. The Chicken Little phenomenon of Cubs fans was never more apparent than during Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS -- yes, I really was there -- when the atmosphere in the park went from "We're going to the World Series!" to "We're totally screwed" in the blink of an eye. The entire stadium tightened up, convinced that some fan had cost the Cubs the World Series. Of course, that's exactly what happened, but it wasn't destined to occur because of a fan touching a foul ball; it happened because of the way everyone reacted afterwards. Some players lost their cool, the fans totally freaked out, the remaining players started feeling the pressure, and the Cubs were done. Still makes me nauseous thinking about it.

Ever since then, Cubs fans have become increasingly willing to turn on the home team or a specific member of it. Bradley's not the first to feel it, though the vitriol possibly has been the most intense. Of course, he didn't do himself any favors with his surly attitude with the press and his major persecution complex. (Umpires and tykes at his kids' preschool alike, they're all against Milton Bradley!) All the booing made Bradley dislike Wrigley; he even admitted not being "comfortable" because of the "adversity and hatred" he faced there, going as far as saying, "I just pray the game is nine innings so I can be out there the least amount of time as possible and go home."

Ok, so are we clear about Milton Bradley hating playing at Wrigley, how all the negativity -- which no doubt exists -- had such deleterious effects on his psyche? Good. Because the numbers bear it out. Here are Bradley's Road/Home splits:

206 AB, 61 H, 9 HR, 28 RBI, 33 BB, 48 K, .296/.407/.485, 130 OPS+
-VS-
187 AB, 40 H, 3 HR, 12 RBI, 33 BB, 47 K, .214/.347/.299, 67 OPS+

That is a pretty drastic difference. Almost makes you feel bad for the guy, to see his performance suffering so badly because of the atmosphere at his home field. But perhaps I should have put the tags in there:

Home: 206 AB, 61 H, 9 HR, 28 RBI, 33 BB, 48 K, .296/.407/.485, 130 OPS+

Away: 187 AB, 40 H, 3 HR, 12 RBI, 33 BB, 47 K, .214/.347/.299, 67 OPS+

Man, just imagine how good he would have at Wrigley if the fans had only supported him.