Roundtable:  Bradley and Soriano

Milton Bradley and Alfonso Soriano have both underperformed in the 1st half. Soriano more so than Bradley, but neither have given the Cubs what they expected out of them to this point. Are you confident both will rebound in the 2nd half? Why or why not? Wreckard: I’m much more confident in Bradley - not only is he a better hitter to begin with, his problems appeared to be 100% mechanical (and in the last week before the break, he appeared to have finally made progress fixing them). Soriano looks broken in a completely different way. He’s not moving the same, not just at the plate but in the field and on the basepaths. When he swings, his top and bottom halves are completely out of sync. I’m convinced he’s hurt, and worried it’s one of those kinds of injuries where either he works through it or has surgery and misses the rest of the season. Why else would they be trotting him out there game after game to embarass himself? berselius: Yes, for both of them (more so to Bradley though). Soriano is such a streaky hitter and his injury managed to extend the funk that he was (and still is) in. The real question is whether we think he will actually get healthy. He could be injured just enough to really hurt the team, and he’s got so much pride in his abilities that I don’t think he’d accept a DL stint unless he literally cannot play the field. But this is all idle and groundless speculation. We don’t have enough information to know if he actually is still injured, so we have to assume that he’s going to regress to his projections. Bradley has been playing better lately and is just too good to be this ****** for so long. Of course, with the Cubs luck he’ll get hot next week and then break his hand when someone steps on it while he’s hustling into a base. Women’s Fitness: I think Bradley will rebound, but I’m not sure Soriano will. I mean, I’m sure Soriano will get better—he can’t get worse, can he?—but I think we’ll see a pretty mediocre 2nd half from Soriano. Something like .260, 14 HR. He’s hurt, and he’s not going to take the time off to make himself right. It would be one thing if he was insisting on batting leadoff, I think Lou would have to bench him. But, he’s willing to bat sixth and he’ll be a decent hitter for the sixth spot. But, he won’t rebound. Bradley, I believe. He’s back. He’s going to keep walking and I think he’ll start roping the ball all over the place a la spring training. Ok, maybe not that well, but he’s too good to not rebound. He’s healthy, or as healthy as he ever is. There’s absolutely no reason to think he won’t rebound. He wants to do well and shove it in everyone’s face, and I support that. Trajan: I think Soriano has more of a chance to bounce back. He’s showing signs of coming back already. He just needs to go on one of his patented 7HR binges in a 2 week stretch and people will be chanting SOR I AN O at wrigley soon enough. Bradley, I’m more concerned about. He’s not going to be a run producer…he’s not a guy that carries a team. Lou needs to recognize this and put him higher in the order(2 spot). If he continues to be a singles hitter from the left side(with amazing OBP) he needs to be put in a spot in the order where he isn’t asked to drive in runs on a consistent basis. If Joshua unlocks/fixes the problem with his Left side swing..then consider my suggestion unecessary, but I doubt Bradley has much sucess in the second half. DylanJ: Yes, both have been taking better swings and Bradley hit the ball with authority last night. His slump was mechanical as his batting eye never changed. I look for a 2nd half OPS over .900. Soriano will be better but I’m less optimistic with him. His overall game isn’t as sound as Milton’s and as he ages his bat speed will slow and he will get worse and worse. Suburban Kid: Look, the only reason I’m doing this and not copping out is because my Internet is down and I have a bit of free time. However, my Internet is down so I won’t be able to look at these guys’ stats and make a facile projection based on obvious trends. Therefore, I will stick to the aspects of the game I know best: the mental, emotional, anthropological, and otherwise intangible aspects. (I will spare you the musical and sexual aspects of baseball.) These guys are going to hit. They may not come all the way back, but they are going to improve. I believe Soriano is injured, but I also believe he has the type of injury that does not get better during the season, or during a two-week DL stint. He is going to stay in the lineup, and the injury may prevent him getting back to his 2007/2008/April 2009 self, but he will eventually be able to compensate for what’s troubling him and get a few more hits than he has been getting, with a bit more power. How do I know this? I don’t, but it’s what I believe. As for Bradley, I believe him when he says he’s back. His problem has been two-fold: his LH swing, and coping with first-year Cubdom. There is evidence that he is now overcoming both, and that he is prepared to keep them from bothering him anymore. I look forward to watching him starting on Thursday. johnny_abrego: Yes. I really waffled on Soriano. It’s a shame hit f/x is so new, because as of right now, all you can find is April data (or at least all I can find) and Soriano was tearing it up. He was the 27th best big leaguer according to hit f/x in hit ball linear weight. The stuff I found on Cubs f/x also suggested that in April was still smoking balls off the bat, so it’s not like his bat slowed down by some ridiculous amount. April seems to tell me that his turning 33 didn’t totally turn him into a poor offensive player. With Soriano, I just think he’s a simple player. He strikes me as the kind of dude where if you were able to steal the signs from the catcher, he wouldn’t want to know them. I think his confidence has taken a punch to the crotch in May & June and that’s really all it is. He’s looked like a ******* plenty of times in his career in isolated events but he’s always bounced back (last year’s fielding gaffe in STL then a game tying homer in the 9th where he slapped his healmet as soon as he hit it comes to mind). A dominant game from him where he can admire a bomb or two out to CF will be about all he’ll need to get it in gear. Bradley, I’m not even remotely concerned about. He’s reached base with greater frequency than any Cub not named Fuld. When I look at his salary ‘value’ on Fangraphs, here’s how he does through his career since it began in 2002. $4.8M, $13.4M, $10.3M, $7.1M, $10.1M, $9.9M, $20M, ($.02M). So, it’s just pretty damn hard for me to imagine it even being remotely possible he doesn’t destroy the 2nd half. Add in his comments he gave to Muskat and I’m totally pumped for his 2nd half. Mercurial Outfielder: No, I’m not confident. I hope they will, and I have every reason, probability-wise to assume they will—but this season has been in stark defiance of probability. I’m not sure what to think. I think they’ll rebound, but at the same time, I won’t count on it. How’s that for milquetoast ********? nittany cub: More Bradley than Soriano, if anything. Bradley’s average and HR total are so far down his average that it makes little to no sense that he won’t bounce back. Soriano is tumbling to his mid-30s and looking really bad at it. I feel that the first signs of age creeping it’s ugly hand on a baseball players’ performance is his speed, and you can tell Soriano isn’t the fastest guy in the outfield right now. MB21: Bradley is going to be fine. His problems have been mechanical and throughout these he’s still taken a lot of walks. Despite his struggles, and they have been painful to watch at times, his wOBA is .343 (Ryan Theriot’s is .342) so he’s actually been a slightly above average MLB hitter. His OBP is .379. So even though he’s not hitting for average, he’s not making outs. In fact, among Cubs players with 100 or more PA that .379 OBP is higher than any other player. Fukudome is next at .367 and then you get to Lee at .354. If you need a guy at the plate (even in the first half) to not make an out, Bradley was the team’s best bet. Think about that for just a moment. Think about how awful he has been and then consider that he still made fewer outs per PA than any other Cub. Think about how good he’s going to be when he starts hitting the ball. Using 100 PA as a cutoff again, Derrek Lee leads the Cubs with a .370 wOBA. Fukudome is next at .344 and just one point behind him is Milton Bradley. Yes, Milton Bradley has been this team’s 3rd best hitter. That’s not a good thing since he’s been barely above average, but to be as bad as he has been and still be among the best on the team is just remarkable. Of the top 4 hitters in wOBA, Bradley also has the lowest BABIP at .288. Lee’s is .298, Fukudome’s is .294 and Theriot’s is .337. I go back and forth on Soriano. I really think a lot of his problems began with the knee and now it’s a confidence issue. If he can get that confidence back he’ll be fine. If the knee is still a problem then he’s not likely to get better this season. sitrick: While both of their struggles are well documented, I would have to say that Bradley is more likely to rebound in the second half. Bradley’s only problem is his inability to hit from the left side. If he can correct this in the second half he will be dangerous. His current line from the right side: .350/.418/.500. If he continues to struggle from the left side perhaps he should consider just hitting from the right side. Soriano is most likely playing hurt. Why a selfish, lazy latino person would do this defies all reason. shawndgoldman: Yes, I am confident both will rebound. The question is how far they’ll bounce back. Will they return to the pre-season performance expectations? To some midpoint between the two? Both looked good in the last series against the Cardinals, after some time on the bench and with hitting coach Von Joshua. I really have no idea here, so I’ll go with the ZiPS projections: a wOBA of .353 for Soriano and .384 for Bradley. That’s not what we hoped for or expected, but it should be good enough if the team can stay healthy. cwolf: I’m confident both will rebound in the second half. I think we’ve all seen signs of this in the games leading up to the break especially in Bradley’s case. Even at his lowest point, MB was showing excellent patience at the plate. I can only remember him swinging at a few bad pitches all season. He has the best eye of any Cub player I’ve ever seen as evidenced by his OBP to date. Obviously, his problem has been he hasn’t been able to hit with any authority consistently and his mechanics got messed up badly somewhere along the line particularly from the left side. He seems to have made some adjustments and I expect a really strong 2nd half out of him with a shitload of balls hammered into the gaps and some HR power from the right side. On a side note, is it me or have the Cubs faced very little LHP this year? Soriano also seems to be coming around some. He’s laying off the unhittable pitches a little more and seems to be just trying to make solid contact to drive the ball up the middle. As he has said, this is the longest and worst slump of his career and that has to be really tough on a guy that’s been a really good hitter in mlb for almost a decade. Even at that high level, it has to be hard to regain confidence but I think he will. His numbers won’t end up as good as the last couple years but once he forces pitchers to throw him some strikes he’ll start hitting HRs again and going back to the Soriano we’ve seen - some really bad ABs balanced with some strong power hitting. What Sori really needs is a game where some chump thinks he can sneak a couple fastballs down the middle. I hope it comes soon because I really enjoy watching Soriano at the plate when he’s in a groove. I also think that when he starts hitting that his defense will return to what we expect out of him. He’s been pretty bad out there this year and I believe the knee problem is a big factor in the defensive decline since he relies on his speed to cut off balls in the gap and down the line. thisyearcub: I’m a lot more confident in Bradley rebounding than Soriano. The last couple weeks, he has had better at-bats. He’s taken 13 walks in 28 at-bats in July, which tells me he’s slowing things down and not pressing, which he’s said was his problem earlier this year. Sooner or later, pitchers are going to have to give him something to hit, considering he has one of the best eyes in baseball and will be batting somewhere in the mix of Lee/Ramirez/Soriano. He scorched a ball in the nightcap of the STL doubleheader and I think that’s what we’ll be seeing a lot more of in the second half. As for Soriano, it’s no secret he’s a streaky hitter and while I expect him to go on a hot streak sometime in the second half, I’m not sure he can sustain it to a respectable average. I’m of the school that thinks a DL trip to strengthen his knee would do him some good, but I’m not sure that’s going to happen since he’s pretty adamant on being in the lineup. I do like him in the 6 hole and hope Lou continues to bat him there. He hit the ball pretty well in the STL series; it just happened to be line drives to the outfielders. We’ll see.