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Toronto Blue Jays v Boston Red Sox

FANTASY BASEBALL – Jackie Bradley


BaseballFantasyMLB

This time of year, good help is hard to find.

Something about the urgency of it, the fact every move has to pay immediate dividends, makes playing the waiver wire more agonizing than ever.

Which isn’t a problem if your starting lineup is stable, featuring players so high-end that you have no reason to deviate from it. But if a hole opens somewhere, suddenly you have to fill it with a player the rest of the league has deemed unworthy or a roster spot.

Fortunately, if that hole is in the outfield, you have nothing to worry about.

Jackie Bradley, OF, Red Sox (67 percent owned)

Just a few weeks ago, Bradley was the poster child for the presumed overhyping of Red Sox prospects, failing to live up to the potential that made him a top prospect in 2013, when he won a job as the Red Sox’s opening day center fielder with a sizzling spring.

It’s not like that was his only opportunity either. He answered every call over the last two years with a sub-.200 batting average, looking so overmatched that most evaluators began to dismiss him as little more than a defensive specialist.

But now, it’s the rest of the league that looks overmatched. Since becoming an everyday player with the departure of Alejandro De Aza in late August, Bradley is 14 for 25 with two home runs, a triple and five doubles. He went 4 for 4 with an opposite-field home run over the Green Monster Sunday and is consistently outperforming Mookie Betts, who has been the 13th-best Head-to-Head outfielder on a per-game basis this year.

So what changed for him? It’s not always a clear-cut explanation. He has made some mechanical adjustments this year, and considering his minor-league numbers also reflect the improvement, that’s probably the biggest reason for the turnaround. At age 25, he’s just now entering his prime, and as interim manager Torey Lovulla suggested, he may have finally learned he doesn’t need to change his stroke to succeed at the highest level.

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