On Aug. 6, Jackie Bradley Jr. was batting .102, and his future with the Boston Red Sox looked bleak. On Sept. 7, he was batting .312 after one of the most incredible months of baseball fans had ever seen.
In that month, Bradley batted .411 with an MVP-like 1.319 OPS — by far the best in baseball — seven home runs and 32 RBIs. But on Sept. 8, another slump began.
JBJ entered Saturday batting .263, with just one hit and 17 strikeouts in his last 30 at-bats. That fell to a .260 average after he recorded outs in his first two ABs on Saturday, but the outfielder rebounded with an RBI double in the seventh inning and a game-tying two-run home run in the ninth of Boston’s dramatic come-from-behind 7-6 win vs. the Toronto Blue Jays.
So what was the issue for the past 11 days? Given his recent success, Bradley explained that he was trying to be “too perfect” at the plate.
“I’ve been in those type of spells, so I knew what it was all about,” he told the Boston Herald’s Scott Lauber. “I’ve got to keep swinging.”
Red Sox shortstop Xander Bogaerts, who launched a homer of his own Saturday, didn’t seem very worried about JBJ.
Let’s take a look at some other Red Sox notes.
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— Speaking of Bogaerts, the 22-year-old just keeps on hitting. His two hits Saturday give him 178 on the season, second only to Houston Astros second baseman Jose Altuve in the American League.
Bogaerts’ .321 batting average also is second-best in the AL, trailing only Miguel Cabrera (.337), who has played just 109 games for the Detroit Tigers this season. He also is fifth in baseball, behind Bryce Harper (.340), Cabrera, Dee Gordon (.332) and Buster Posey (.327).
But no, he’s still not an All-Star. Hmph.
— Bogaerts also took an awkward hit on a grounder to first base late in the contest.
He stayed in the game and seemed fine, despite wincing upon hitting the ground and walking off the field slowly.
“You know, all I want to do is avoid the tag and just get to the base,” Bogaerts told reporters in Toronto, as seen on NESN’s “Red Sox Final,” after the game. “He held onto the ball well. I mean, it was a weird play. It’s something you don’t see often.”
Bogaerts wasn’t the only one dinged up: Jean Machi tripped down the bullpen stairs in the eighth inning before entering the game and cut his ear.
— Mookie Betts’ third-inning single gave him a 19-game hit streak against the Blue Jays, third-longest in club history. NESN broadcaster and former Red Sox second baseman Jerry Remy owns the longest, spanning 24 games.
— With a win against R.A. Dickey on Saturday, Boston now is 9-4 against former Cy Young award winners this season. They moved to 4-2 in games Dickey started Saturday, and also own winning records against Felix Hernandez (2-0), Justin Verlander (2-0), and Corey Kluber (1-0). They’ve lost both games New York Yankees pitcher C.C. Sabathia has started against them in 2015.
Dickey earned a no-decision Saturday, which made him the first pitcher since Dick Fowler in 1946 to start six games against the Red Sox in a single season without recording a win.
Fowler went 0-6 in 1946 against Boston with the Philadelphia Athletics despite a 2.74 ERA in 46 innings pitched. Dickey owns a 4.62 ERA in 37 innings pitched against the Red Sox this season.
— Saturday marked the first time all season the Red Sox won a game after trailing through eight innings. They had been 0-65 this season, with no ninth-inning or later comebacks.
It also was Toronto’s first loss of that manner all year. They had been 73-0.
“Any time you can come back and win a ballgame — whether it’s the eighth, ninth, seventh — it doesn’t really matter,” Wade Miley told reporters on NESN’s “Red Sox Extra Innings” following the win. “It shows the fight we have in here. And we’re still fighting. It was a good team win.”
— That five-run rally was the special kind of game typically reserved for teams in a pennant race. David Ortiz longingly made note of that postgame.
The Blue Jays’ magic number to eliminate the Red Sox from contention in the AL East is just 1, meaning a Blue Jays win or Red Sox loss prevents Boston from winning the division in 2015.
For what it’s worth, Boston’s elimination number still is nine games in the wild card. They currently sit 6 1/2 games back with 15 to play, and they’d have to pass seven teams to win the second wild card spot.
In other words, it would take a miracle, but the Red Sox actually still can make the playoffs. Sure, it seems fairly impossible, but on Aug. 5, so were the prospects of Bradley Jr. hitting .411 and becoming the best hitter in baseball.
Thumbnail photo via Nick Turchiaro/USA TODAY Sports Images
