Did you spend your weekend the same way I did? Sitting in an empty white room, bouncing a tennis ball against a wall and thinking about the Milton Bradley-Carlos Silva trade? No? You went to an ugly Christmas sweater party? Oh. Why the hell are THOSE suddenly popular, by the way? Anyhow, I’ve come to the conclusion that the trade that made no sense on Friday makes even less sense today. Allow me one final rant on this stupid, stupid trade in the form of a theme paper called…

The Only Reasons to Trade Milton Bradley and Why They’re All Stupid
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On December 18, 2009, Jim Hendry, general manager of the Chicago Cubs, a Major League Baseball team that plays in the National League Central, traded one of its outfielders, Milton Bradley, to the Seattle Mariners. In exchange for Milton Bradley, the Cubs received a right-handed pitcher named Carlos Silva. Silva had shown some signs of promise early in his career, while pitching for the Minnesota Twins, but had struggled badly in his last few seasons. In fact, some people outside of the Cub organization suggested that Silva, “blows worse than a hawk wind” (Kermit, Bad. Interview, December, 2009) and “awful, horrible…old” (Dolan, Andy. “Your turd for mine?” Desipio, December 18, 2009). There are several reasons why the Cubs might have wanted to trade Milton Bradley for Carlos Silva, but all of those reasons are inherently stupid.

The first reason that the Cubs may have wanted to trade Milton Bradley for Carlos Silva is to upgrade the outfield. Bradley had a difficult year in the Cub outfield in 2009. He took bad routes to fly balls, he lost fly balls in the sun, and he famously lost track of the number of outs in an inning against the Minnesota Twins, causing him to throw a live ball into the bleachers. Bradley was met with a chorus of boos.

At the plate, Bradley was mediocre. He failed to show the power he had shown the previous year while playing with the Texas Rangers. Through his struggles, however, Bradley still managed to post the third-best on-base percentage on the team during the 2009 season.

To suggest that the Cubs wanted to trade Bradley to upgrade the outfield assumes that the Cubs will replace Bradley with a better player. Silva, the player they received in return for Bradley, does not play the outfield. Even if he did, it would be difficult to argue that the career .111 hitter would be a better outfielder than Bradley. Moreover, Silva’s inherent fatness makes the thought of him trying to defensively play the outfield comical. Clearly, the Cubs did not intend to upgrade the outfield by replacing Bradley with Silva.

Therefore, if it was the Cubs’ intention to upgrade the outfield by replacing Bradley, one must look at the other outfield options that the Cubs have. On their roster, the Cubs have several candidates that could conceivably replace Bradley. Those candidates are the following: Sam Fuld, Tyler Colvin, and Jeff Baker. Baker is expected to be either the starting second baseman, or the Cubs’ utility player. That leaves Fuld and Colvin as the two options. Neither one of them are better baseball players than Bradley.

Since they did not receive a suitable replacement player in the trade, nor do they have one in their system, the Cubs, seemingly, would have to explore either another trade or the free agent market to upgrade the outfield. There are a few free agents available (most notably Matt Holliday, Jason Bay, and Vladimir Guerrero) who will likely have better offensive numbers than Bradley did during the 2009 season. However, all three of these free agents are prohibitively expensive and, thus, not likely replacements for Bradley. Because the Cubs did not receive a suitable replacement player in the trade, because they do not have a more capable outfielder in their organization, and because they cannot afford one of the premiere outfielders in the free agent market, any argument that the Cubs traded Milton Bradley in an effort to upgrade their outfield is inherently flawed.

The second argument that the Cubs have made for trading Milton Bradley is that the trade was an attempt to save money. As the Cubs received not only Silva, but also $9M in cash from the Mariners, they theoretically saved approximately $6M in payroll for the 2010 season. However, Silva’s contract has a $2M buyout in 2012, which the Cubs will almost definitely exercise. Moreover, the Cubs currently only have one everyday outfielder on the roster in Alfonso Soriano, plus one outfielder (Kosuke Fukudome) whom they would just as soon platoon with a right-handed outfielder.

Presumably, most if not all of the $6M that the Cubs saved by trading Bradley will be used to sign an outfielder. Most likely, that outfielder will be a lesser player than Bradley himself. Therefore, not only will the Cubs not have saved money by trading Bradley, but they will have also downgraded the team’s outfield. Furthermore, they now have on their roster one of the worst pitchers in baseball in Silva. Because the Cubs did not even save enough money to sign a player suitable to replace Bradley, the argument that they made the trade to save money is inherently stupid.

The third and final argument for the reason the Cubs traded Milton Bradley is also the most compelling. The Cubs have argued that Bradley was such a sociopathic jerk, that they were forced to trade him. It has been made clear in the past that Milton Bradley is a lunatic. However, the Cubs seem to be suggesting that Bradley was such a big meanie, that they were unable to function as a team during the 2009 season.

“Chemistry” is an invented phenomenon that sportswriters like to write about when they have nothing more interesting to write. Chemistry is the belief that teammates who like each other and get along well will be better at sports, and teammates who do not like each other, and who do not go over to one anothers’ homes for barbecues will be worse at sports.

Often, very good teams like the 2002 Angels will have a scrappy little bad baseball player like David Eckstein, whom sportswriters will give credit for “good chemistry” on the team, since they cannot credit him with “majestic power,” “a great throwing arm,” or “a lot of home runs.” Sportswriters will often attribute the success of the overall good team to a bad player, using “chemistry” as a justification to write a feel-good story that makes any dwarf reading it feel that someday, he, too, can be a professional baseball player.

On the other hand, very bad teams like the 2006 Cubs are often attributed with “bad chemistry.” Rather, the 2006 Cubs should have been more accurately attributed with “bad players.” In its starting lineup, the 2006 Cubs boasted Michael Barrett, Todd Walker, Ronny Cedeno, Matt Murton, Juan Pierre, and Jacques Jones, all bad players. Moreover, the team was headed by one of the most unquestionably terrible managers in the history of baseball, Dusty Baker. Attributing good or bad chemistry to a good or bad team does not make chemistry any more of a real quality. Moreover, if “chemistry” is a real phenomenon, the 1977 and 1978 New York Yankees had no business winning back-to-back World Series titles. The infighting between the players, Billy Martin, and George Steinbrenner was infamous. Yet the Yankees were able to rise above all that alleged “bad chemistry” to win, because they had very, very good players.

Solely for the purposes of this discussion, I will assume that “good chemistry” is an actual phenomenon rather than something fabricated by sportswriters, like “curses” and “Neifi Perez.” If one were to assume that the Cubs wanted to improve the team’s chemistry by getting rid of Milton Bradley, one could also reasonably assume that they would not want the player they received in the Bradley trade to be a malcontent, as well.

Unfortunately for the Cubs, it appears that Carlos Silva is also an antisocial nitwit.

It is no surprise that the Seattle Mariners have underperformed this year. Consequently, it would be assumed that many of the players are feeling a lot of stress and disappointment from this year’s results.

Recently many of these frustrations have been coming to a head, and players have begun throwing each other under the bus publicly.

This all started about a week ago when Carlos Silva mouthed off to the media about how the pitchers have all been showing up focused, and ready to go, while the batters are playing lackadaisically.

(Moore, Braden. “Seattle Mariners: Clubhouse in Turmoil,” Bleacherreport.com, August 12, 2008) as quoted on Desipio (Yeti, Irish. “The Fuck You Carlos Silva thread,” Desipio.com, December 18, 2009).

Not only did Silva treat his teammates like garbage, but he has also been nasty to the media. In the aforementioned Desipio thread, Irish Yeti also located an article by Mariners beat writer Larry LaRue describing an unpleasant incident between LaRue and Silva.

Carlos Silva came out of the training room and I asked how his back was. He’d had spasms a night earlier, come out of the game after gritting his teeth on each pitch the final two innings – and Silva had won.

So I asked the question, and he ignored me and kept walking. Sometimes, players are focused and don’t hear you. Sometimes, they ignore you.

A few minutes later, Silva walked back across the clubhouse and as he passed, I asked again, ‘How’s your back this morning?’

“Good,” he said, and kept moving.

Not exactly expansive, but straight forward. About two minutes later, MLB.com writer Jim Street entered the clubhouse and glanced around, then asked who was winning the card game. We beat guys don’t miss a thing.

“They both are,” I told him.

Street saw Silva across the room and asked me, “How’s Carlos feeling?”

I told him Carlos might not be in a talkative mood, explaining our brief conversation. Silva came walking over, angry.

“If you have something to say to me, say it to me, don’t tell him,” he said. “You’re always stirring up poo.”

Ok, he didn’t say poo. Close enough.

“I was trying to save him and you time,” I told Silva.

“You’re always stirring up poo,” he said. “That’s why I don’t talk to you.”

I stared at him. A confused beat guy does that. Carlos had never not talked to me before.

“Don’t ever ask me for another interview,” Silva said and walked away.

(LaRue, Larry. “Life on the beat: Don’t stir the poo,” The News Tribune, April 26, 2009)

It appears from these firsthand accounts that Carlos Silva is not a much better human being and clubhouse influence than Milton Bradley was. Therefore, the argument that the Cubs traded Milton Bradley to make their clubhouse chemistry better is flawed.

Because the Cubs will not replace him with a better player, because they did not save a significant amount of money in trading him, and because they replaced him with another disruptive personality in the clubhouse, the Cubs’ reasons for trading Milton Bradley are all inherently stupid.