Chili Davis: Bradley ‘starting to feel sexy at the plate'

Share

BOSTON - Jackie Bradley's emergence as one of the hottest hitters in all of baseball over the last month is a shock to just about everybody who's followed his short major league career.

Bradley's known for his exceptional fielding, but it was the hitting - or lack thereof - that kept him from evolving with the Sox and kept him off the team's 2015 opening day roster.

Bradley made a couple cameos with the Sox throughout the season with similar results to 2014: great fielding, next to zero hitting.

Then August came around for a last place Red Sox team that was now focused on the future. Rusney Castillo and Bradley were going to get their opportunities to contribute. The .102 hitter on Aug. 5 had disappeared. Hitting coach Chili Davis doesn't expect to see him around again, either. Davis, instead, isn't surprised to see him gone at all.

Speaking with CSNNE's Jessica Moran, Davis said that Bradley's confidence is on the rise, and he now sees himself as part of the Red Sox.

"You know what I think, truly? That's Jackie. It's not amazing to me, it's not surprising to me," Davis said of Bradley's turnaround. "I just think that that's him. That's why he's a big league player. That's why he's a Red Sox prospect. The things that he's done are the things that they saw him capable of doing. So I'm not really surprised. I just see a kid now that, I think that at one point Jackie might have counted himself out of being a part of the Red Sox organization. I think he's counting himself in now. I think he knows what he can do and he's doing it."

From Aug. 9 going into Tuesday's game, Bradley was batting .426 with a .918 slugging percentage. He had nine doubles, three triples, five home runs, 22 RBI, 20 runs, and five steals.

On Tuesday, he cracked two more doubles.

Nobody is feeling better than Bradley is. Davis chose a different word . . .

"He's gone back to the way he hit before naturally and it's working for him," Davis said. "And that's helped him to gain his confidence. Now he's starting to feel sexy at the plate, you know what I mean? And when you feel sexy at the plate it's a good thing. It can be dangerous because then you think you could hit everything. But he's managed that as well.

"He's given us some real good at-bats and like I said he feels sexy at the plate and he's swinging the bat exactly like he's feeling. He's using his whole ball park. He's got some life in that bat. He's not a real big guy but when he squares a ball up it jumps off that bat."

Contact Us