What If The Team Leaders Want Bradley Gone?

I was reading through a thread on BCB that was written by shawndgoldman (also posted here). There’s some nonsense in the thread and some decent posts, which really surprised me. Shawn said something I wanted to comment on though. Look if the rest of the team wants him out of there, then I’m fine with getting rid of him. But you’re assuming that will be the case. You don’t know what the team “leaders” will say about this. I don’t necessarily disagree with this, but I don’t really agree with it either. We can explain the Cubs disappointing season rather easily if we look at the average pre-season projection for the players. Let’s take a look at what a few of them were projected to do and what they have done so far. Remember, these were based on the playing time estimates that we provided. I’ve also used the pre-season projections to estimate September projection to get a season total. these player’s projections aren’t as good now as they were when the season began, but it’s fairly close and close enough for the purpose of this post. Geovany Soto: 4.9 WAR projected, 1.0 WAR actual, 1.8 WAR end of season Mike Fontenot: 3.3, 0.5, 1.1 Aramis Ramirez: 4.1, 1.9, 2.6 Alfonso Soriano: 3.9, -0.5, 0.2 Milton Bradley: 3.3, 1.62, 2.2 Rich Harden: 4.0, 1.6, 2.3 Carlos Marmol: 1.8, 0.4, 0.7 Kevin Gregg: 0.7, -0.3, -0.2 The average projection system had the Cubs winning 95 games. The combined total of these underperformers (Ramirez was injured and has performed very well) is 15.5 WAR. That makes the Cubs, based on this, 80 to 81 win club assuming all other players performed up to potential. That hasn’t been the case and more than likely won’t be. considering the strength of schedule the Cubs are likely to win 86-88 games. Fukudome is one of a few players to play better than projected. Ryan Theriot has, and so has Randy Wells. Sam Fuld and Jake Fox have both stepped up after getting called up to the big leagues. You can’t help but noticed the two groups here. The first group are the underperformers. That group has the star players while the other group had less valuable players who have played better than expected. The difference is about what will help the Cubs end up being an 86 or 88 win club when the season ends. What I’m trying to say is that the reason this team is where they are is a handful of players (for the most part). I’m not assigning blame. This happens. Bad seasons have happened and will continue to happen, but if the team leaders want to blame this on Milton Bradley, I pray Jim Hendry is intelligent enough to look at information similar to this and realize that the players would be doing the same thing as the fans—finding someone to blame. The only reason I trade Milton Bradley is if he asks for a trade. If the players want to complain I’ll tell some of them (the team leaders) to look in the mirror. If Lou Piniella wants to complain I’d ask him why he stuck with him for so long. that’s one thing we haven’t mentioned around here. Lou is know for shoving players in his doghouse and that house only has an entrance. Lou has not done that with Bradley at any point this season. We’ve seen over the first couple years that he has no problem tucking some away in the doghouse and there were reasons to do so earlier in the year and Lou stuck with him. I don’t think Lou will be complaining to Hendry and if he does, I’d want to know why he stuck with him unlike other players. If this team has to trade Milton Bradley it’s not going to be improving. It’s going to make contending in 2010 very difficult. If the Cardinals re-sign Holliday it’s going to be very tough for the Cubs to put a team together this offseason that is as good as the Cardinals. The last thing they need to do is give up on Bradley. We have no idea what Ricketts is going to do as an owner this offseason, but I’m not expecting the new owner to sink much money in the club in the free agent market. Trading Bradley for any reason other than him requesting it would be a mistake. This assumes you can’t improve by trading him. If you can get better in RF then by all means trade the guy.