The Indians have promoted first base prospect Bobby Bradley and optioned reliever Josh Smith to Triple-A Columbus, the team announced. Bradley’s already on the Indians’ 40-man roster.
The 23-year-old Bradley, an Indian since they selected him in the third round of the 2014 draft, earned his first MLB promotion by destroying Triple-A pitching this season. The lefty swinger slashed .292/.359/.638 (144 wRC+) with an eye-popping 24 home runs in 284 plate appearances prior to his call-up.
While Bradley’s 2019 numbers are great, he didn’t enter the season as a premium prospect. FanGraphs ranked him 20th among Indians farmhands at the beginning of April, though MLB.com places Bradley a more impressive sixth in the club’s system. Two-plus months ago, Kiley McDaniel and Eric Longenhagen of FanGraphs likened Bradley to the Twins’ C.J. Cron and the Nationals’ Matt Adams.
The Indians’ offense, which has been one of the league’s worst this season, would surely welcome Cron-like production out of Bradley. First baseman Carlos Santana has been outstanding in his return to Cleveland, though primary DH Jake Bauers has disappointed in his initial season with the team. Bradley may eat into Bauers’ playing time as a result.
Not sure why they didn’t option Civale since he pitched yesterday and they won’t need him soon.
I would imagine they are now planning on keeping him in the rotation instead of Plutko, and will option Plutko down after Monday, either for a reliever or for Greg Allen.
He is good pitcher idiot and trade of Bauer will happen, clevinger and carrasco are injury prone, and kluber will be out for awhile that’s y
they need warm bodies in that rotation. if those three dont get back by the deadline, they probably won’t trade him unless some replacement emerges.
Easy with the comments there playnicy…
Asinine…
Awe, the peanus gallery chimes in…
Carrasco is not injury prone. In fact, he’s out because of a non-baseball reason.
Language children!
Agreed. Word was Clevinger was going to make the start on Friday at Baltimore..after the off day on Thursday.
Clev will pitch Friday. I don’t think we trade much at the deadline if the team keeps playing like this. Yes, the schedule is easy right now, but they wouldn’t sweep Detroit twice if they played the way they did in May. Not to mention the fact that they’re the best team in the AL for June thus far.
Bradley will probably play alongside Bauers/Santana, with Bauers playing LF more. Mercado had been playing there, he now goes to CF to replace the DFA’d Leonys Martin.
Now, if we can somehow complete a trade for Frazier, the offense could rise above the MLB acceptable mark.
I’ve seen the highlights where he’s launching homers off LH pitching, but I didn’t realize just how successful he’s been against lefties, hitting .319 with 9 HR.
If he can keep hitting dingers, this offense could start to be very good.
Bauers will likely play left more, with Mercado shifting to Center, and Santana continuing to play first. Bradley will likely DH most of the time. He’s essentially replacing Martin, so as long as he hits better than a 63 ops+, he’s an upgrade
I read that his 32% strikeout rate would place him 4th worst among major league qualifiers if he would’ve done that up here. K rate typically goes up higher in the big leagues. We’ll see what he does. Obviously has tremendous power but there seems to be too much swing and miss in his game. Big leaguers tend to attack those holes much better.
They’re obviously willing to overlook that; they didn’t want to bail on him like they did Aguilar and watch him hitting balls elsewhere when they really needed it in Cleveland.
No I’m not faulting the Indians for the call up. They need to see if he can hack in the big leagues eventually. With that K rate I think it’s going to be hard for him to have a lot of success up here. But obviously they need to find out if he’s Tyler Austin or if they have something.
Decent debut by the big guy. The Tribe has to feel good about the future with some of these kids stepping up like Plesac, Civale, Bradley, Mércado and others.
Indians may be in a prime position to trade Hand or Bauer and not lose a ton of MLB production. There will be a plethora of solid setup men dealt for very little and the way Wittgren has thrown we might deal hand and acquire a guy to setup.
Just thinking logically as a small market Indians fan!!! I am in no way wishing they deal either but with the young talent coming up I know they will be looking to maximize on a return for Bauer.