Bedard: Jackie Bradley Jr. goes from sub-Mendoza line to ALCS MVP

HOUSTON — During the early July series against the Nationals in Washington, D.C., Red Sox center fielder Jackie Bradley Jr. was still battling to get over the Mendoza Line and the team was going back and forth with the Yankees for first place in the AL East.

I thought I had a fair question for Alex Cora — and it was at the time.

Off to the side, I asked if he could foresee a time when he would take Bradley out of the lineup, put J.D. Martinez into the outfield and insert another bat if they needed some punch. Maybe if the division was up for grabs late in the season. And in my mind, I also was eyeing a potential series like this one against the Astros.

Cora didn't hesitate shooting down my question.

“No,” he said with a laugh and a smile. “Nah.”

OK, fair enough. But why … are those other players just that much better?

“The other three guys (Mookie Betts, Andrew Benintendi) are pretty good players too, and they’re elite defenders,” Cora said at the time. “Nothing against (Martinez), he’s a good defender. But when those three are in the outfield, we’re above average.”

Just another case of Cora seeing into the future and being right, while the rest of just kept swinging and missing.

Bradley may have gone hitless in the Red Sox' deciding 4-1 victory in Game 5 on Thursday night, but he walked away with the ALCS MVP trophy after driving in nine runs with huge hits in Game 2 (three-run double), Game 3 (grand slam) and Game 4 (two-run homer). All three of those hits came with two outs.

"Speechless," Bradley said. "It's amazing. I have amazing teammates, amazing staff. Everybody's such a blessing.

"This is what we set out to do when we come to spring training. And we battled -- we've been battle tested, played against a lot of great ball teams. This is definitely a special moment."

At certain points in the season, it seemed like Bradley would sit so he could recalibrate. The decision by Cora to release Hanley Ramirez could have spared Bradley a trip down to Pawtucket. That's how bad things were at one point.

But Bradley's teammates just kept trying to keep his spirits up. Those who had been around Bradley a while, like David Price, knew he had been through similar tough stretches — like 2016, when he rebounded from a bad game on Sunday Night Baseball to having a 29-game hitting streak.

"He got rung up on some pretty tough calls early on in that game, and I just remember going over to him and like, ‘Good things are going to happen for you,’" Price recalled. "He got big extra-base hits for us in extras in that game, and then he went on like a 30-game hit streak (and) did what he did. For him to continue to plug away during the season, hitting the ball hard, right at guys, it’s been tough to watch. I know how much he cares, how much he works, it couldn’t happen to a better dude.

"There's nobody on this team that I can think of in baseball that deserves it more than Jackie. Just, one, the player that he is and, two, more importantly, the person that he is. He continues to work. He continues to grind. He continues to push forward through everything that he has to go through. Watching him line out, hitting balls, 100-plus miles an hour, routinely this year and last year, to see him get that MVP award, to get those big hits, I'm so pumped for him."

When your No. 9 hitter is doing the type of damage Bradley did, especially of late — the Red Sox are 14-0 this season when he homers — Boston is tough to beat.

In the ultimate show of respect, the Astros basically pitched around Bradley in his first at-bat Thursday with two runners already on to face Mookie Betts, who is likely to win the AL regular-season MVP award.

"Their at-bats are really exceptional," said Astros manager A.J. Hinch. "And that's not taking away from their pitching. They pitched well. Their bullpen stepped up when they needed to.

"They have tremendous balance (in the lineup). They put pressure on you from the very beginning. They don't concede any at-bats. They never got off our fastballs, and we couldn't quite -- they laid off tough breaking balls. They do it right. And that's why it's hard to get 27 outs against them."