Derrek Lee States the Obvious: Marlon Byrd Is Not the Anti-Milton Bradley

Derrek Lee has earned the right to say pretty much whatever he wants and have the Chicago sports media listen. That’s what three All-Star appearances and yearly carriage of the Cubs on his back gets him. So they should listen to what he has to say about Milton Bradley and Marlon Byrd, and comparisons between the two.

⇥Asked about possible racial profiling among some media members in comparing Byrd and Bradley, Cubs first baseman Derrek Lee didn’t mince words.⇥⇥“It’s ridiculous,” Lee told Bruce Levine and Jonathan Hood on ESPN 1000’s “Talkin’ Baseball” Saturday morning. “If it was a white guy who came over [to the Cubs] would he be [called] the ‘anti-Milton Bradley’? It just makes no sense. Marlon’s a completely different guy. He wasn’t traded for Milton. He signed here as a free agent, so why even bring Milton Bradley’s name into it? It really makes no sense and it’s just, again, the media trying to make something out of nothing.”⇥

Lee’s right, of course: comparing players based on race is incredibly lazy stuff. In fairness, though, this article from the Chicago Sun-Times, which likely spurred Lee’s comments, doesn’t note the race of either Bradley or Byrd. It just makes a comparison based on their behavior that would seem to be tinged with race if you know the backstory of Bradley being besieged with racist insults by Cubs fans; it’s not quite a race-based comparison, but race certainly factors into it.

However, by focusing on demeanor, with a sprinkling of race, the Chicago media might be missing the point that Byrd is in some ways the anti-Bradley, mostly because he’s just not as good at baseball as Bradley is.

With both of them coming to the Cubs from the Rangers, an on-field comparison of their two years in Texas makes for a better analysis than most baseball comparisons. Last year, with Texas, Byrd put up a .283/.329/.479 triple slash with 20 homers in 547 at-bats last year, and doubled (43 times) more often than he walked (32). Bradley’s 2008 in Texas was a career year: he had 414 at-bats, more walks (80) than singles (78), hit 22 home runs, and compiled a magnificent .321/.436/.563. Bradley has power and plate discipline (he hit just .257 in 2009, but still had a .372 OBP) that Byrd lacks, and neither is anything special in the field; it’s not hard to conclude that Bradley has been a demonstrably better player.

But it’s easy to seize on intangibles and clubhouse demeanor, especially in the early days of Spring Training, when those are basically all reporters can see, and write about it. That has produced a mini-controversy dumb enough that SportsCenter’s blog lampooned it. When whatever intern is writing that blog has a more enjoyable and informative take on an issue than the Chicago Sun-Times does, it suggests to me that the paper should dig a little deeper.

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