As if things weren’t already going badly enough, Milton Bradley misplaced his brain on the way to the ballpark Friday.
- In the sixth inning, with Bradley on second and Mike Fontenot on third, Derrek Lee hit a routine grounder to third. The Twins were conceding the run, but Bradley took off for third on the play and ran right into the out.
- In the seventh inning, Bradley lost a flyball in the sun in right, helping the Twins scored a run.
- In the eighth, he caught Joe Mauer’s routine flyball into right, stood there and stared at nothing for three seconds and then underhanded the ball into the bleachers. After the second out of the inning.
The third blunder had no effect on the scoreboard, as Bradley wouldn’t have thrown out Nick Punto on the sac fly anyway. It did allow Brendan Harris to advance from first base, but Justin Morneau went on to fly out to end the inning. Also, he likely was a net asset on the day anyway, since he had a two-run double in the sixth that gave him just his third multi-RBI game of the season.
Bradley, though, deserves the scorn of Cubs fans for his performance so far. He still has time to make up for it and turn these first 10 weeks into nothing more than a bad memory, but first, he needs to get his head into the game.