McAdam: Jackie Bradley Jr. is officially gone from Boston, and with him, something that can't be measured

The last decade or so has produced an avalanche of data for baseball fans to consume. The acronyms -- WAR, OPS+, WPA, BAbip -- are endless and enough to send you back to your high school physics class.

Which isn't to suggest that they aren't useful and informative. Anything that helps further enhance our understanding of the game should be most welcome.

But sometimes, we get so buried in the analytics -- and our interpretation of them -- that we forget more ordinary aspects of the game. We risk losing out on the fun the game can deliver.

I mention all of this in the wake of Jackie Bradley Jr. agreeing to a two-year, $24-million deal with the Milwaukee Brewers early Thursday morning. The agreement confirmed what everyone had suspected for some time -- that Bradley had already played his last game for the Red Sox. The only unknown was when and where he would sign, and for how much.

The news resulted in mostly sad resignation on the part of Red Sox fans, but naturally enough, there was the contrarian view: that Bradley, while a nice enough player, was not a significant loss. After all, for all the accolades for his defensive wizardry, Bradley had been awarded just one Gold Glove in his time with the Sox, and some of the more advanced defensive metrics had indicated that his glovework had been, well, overstated.

(Bradley's defenders have always countered that Fenway's odd outfield dimensions conspired to deprive Bradley of his rightful value, with the Wall in left-center limiting his range and ability to make homer-saving catches).

Again, the goal here isn't to denigrate the value of analytics. Rather, it's to point out, revealing as they might be, they sometimes fail to capture the full scope of a player's appeal.

Forget, for a minute, range factor or DRS (defensive runs saved), and instead answer this question: what will you think of when you think of Bradley's time in Boston?

A few will undoubtedly cite his offensive inconsistency, the way he could appear alternately hapless or unstoppable at the plate. When Bradley got hot offensively, he could seemingly carry the team for weeks at a time -- even from the bottom of the lineup. Yet when he fell into bad habits in the box, he could flail at breaking pitches in the dirt or impassively take one called third strike after another.

But hot or cold, Bradley's offense will have little to do with his Red Sox legacy. What he provided as a hitter was merely a bonus.

What remains is Bradley's spectacular defense.

When you watched Bradley in his element, roaming the outfield, you were watching a master at his craft. You could marvel at the almost casual way he tracked balls hit well over his head, confident in his ability to beat the ball to the spot.

If other center fielders -- Jim Edmonds comes immediately to mind -- were criticized for sometimes making moderately difficult catches seem like extraordinary athletic feats, Bradley was at the opposite end of the spectrum, managing to make the improbable appear almost routine.

We can endlessly debate questions that, no matter the data, have no definitive answers. So I can't say that Bradley was demonstrably better than, say, Andruw Jones or Ken Griffey Jr. or Paul Blair. What I can say, with some degree of certainty, is that no one ever got better jumps on balls than Bradley.

I recall a conversation with former manager John Farrell, who almost casually mentioned that Bradley possessed, at best, average speed. That assessment initially shocked me, which was part of the point. It wasn't Farrell's intent to denigrate Bradley by mentioning this; to the contrary, he did so to highlight Bradley's unsurpassed instincts and unmatched breaks on balls. He only seemed fast because he almost never failed to catch up to a ball in flight.

Bradley was so confident in his ability to track the flight of the ball, to anticipate where he needed to be, that his play seemed effortless at times. It was not. Bradley studied hitters, knew his surroundings, understood the geometry of the position and went to work.

How many hitters over the years were fooled by watching Bradley jog after a ball, secure in the knowledge that they had managed to hit a ball somewhere where even he couldn't catch it, only to be deflated as they saw him close in on its flight, deprived of another sure extra-base hit?

The beauty in watching a game with Bradley in center field came from knowing that, on the very next pitch, you might see the best catch you ever saw.

Like, say, this one:

https://twitter.com/BostonStrong_34/status/1196269048687943681?s=20

Of course, it didn't have to save a run or take away a homer to qualify as memorable. Bradley had the ability to make a mid-week, mid-season game against a forgettable opponent into a special night by dint of his stunning athleticism. Some sluggers make their every at-bat a must-see moment, appointment viewing four times per game; with Bradley, he could provide magic in literally every inning.

Alex Cora, while not disclosing his specific plans for the outfield, vowed the Red Sox would be fine.

"I'm not settled with any alignment,'' he said. "I'm settled with talent. We'll be versatile.''

So the post-Bradley Red Sox outfield will be talented, yes. And versatile, too.

But sadly and inarguably, less fun. As it turns out, there's no official metric for that.