Because Bradley is currently the team’s long reliever, he entered in the fifth inning with his team trailing 8-2, and proceeded to get the last out of that inning before pitching the sixth, seventh, and eighth innings too. Here’s how the 14 batters he faced fared against him on Tuesday night.
Groundout, strikeout, strikeout, double, strikeout, walk, fly out, single, strikeout, fly out, strikeout, strikeout, single, strikeout.
Seven of the 14 batters Bradley faced walked back to the dugout having failed to put the ball in play, because Bradley’s stuff was not what he was throwing as a starter. From Nick Piecoro’s postgame story, here a couple of quotes from some scouts who were in attendance.
“He was electric,” a scout with an American League club said. “He was like Wade Davis out there. Everything he threw was above-average. That was (on the 20-80 scouting scale) a 70 fastball, 70 curve, 60 cutter. That must have been exciting for (the Diamondbacks) to see.”
…
“Who was that guy?” another scout asked tongue-in-cheek. “That was really impressive.”
Yes, that scout said Bradley was throwing a 60 cutter, which is interesting because, before Tuesday, Bradley hadn’t thrown any cutters in the big leagues. He threw nine of them on Tuesday, giving hitters another look besides his fastball/curveball combination, and at 91, it’s a high-velocity offering for a pitch that has some movement.
So Bradley picked up four ticks on his fastball in his first relief outing compared to what he was throwing as a starter, and yet he carried it through a long relief outing. He also flashed a new pitch that he hasn’t had before, which got an above-average grade from at least one scout. And to top it off, he absolutely pounded the strike zone, trusting his faster fastball enough to not nibble around the edges, which got him in trouble as a starter.
Yeah, it’s one game, in a low-leverage situation, and not against the best competition you’ll ever see. He struck out Eduardo Nunez and Jarrett Parker twice, along with Chris Marrero and Conor Gillaspie one time apiece; he also got Buster Posey once, to be fair. But the results don’t matter nearly as much as the stuff, and the fact that the stuff held across 14 batters and 57 pitches is perhaps the most interesting aspect of this.
As a guy who is already stretched out to work multiple innings, and has now shown that his stuff might play way up in relief, the Diamondbacks have to be thinking of seeing what he can do for a few innings in more important situations. While Patrick Corbin‘s struggles may open the door for Bradley to move back to the rotation at some point, he may very well be one of those Wade Davis types that is more valuable in relief than he is as a a back-end starter. And since relief work no longer seems to mean 60 one-inning appearances protecting one-to-three-run leads, Bradley seems ideally suited to try the Andrew Miller role.
If the stuff keeps playing up at the level it was on Tuesday, and he can throw 97 with command for 10 batters an outing, that would change the entire complexion of the Diamondbacks bullpen. You give them 80 to 100 high-quality innings from Bradley, maybe 60 to 70 solid innings from de la Rosa, and whatever they get out of their reclamation project setup guys, and this bullpen could be not terrible.
