Chad Bradford: The Last of a Dying Breed

No one thought that Chad Bradford would make his high school team. Bradford did. No one thought that Bradford would do well in a hitters ballpark. Bradford did. No one thought that Bradford would become a reliable reliever in the big leagues. Bradford became one. I found out about Chad Bradford in July of 2005 when the Boston Red Sox acquired him from the Oakland Athletics for an outfielder by the name of Jay Payton. I found out more about him from the book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis, who devotes a whole chapter to the righty reliever. In Moneyball, Lewis tells the story of Bradford in the chapter "Anatomy of an Undervalued Pitcher". Bradford was drafted by the Chicago White Sox in the 1996, and shot through the minors to make his Major League debut in 1998 at the age of 23. He had immediate success in the big leagues, but the White Sox thought of Bradford as "A Triple-A guy" or a "just in case guy", ju...