“I understand what I’m doing wrong. I looked at my tape from last year. I feel it now. So when I tell you I’m back, I’m back. You can mark it down. I’ll be hitting for the rest of the year. I’m back.”

–Milton Bradley, July 12, 2009

Milton Bradley capped off a tumultuous first half of the season by promising Cubs fans a monster second half. He may be able to deliver, he may not. But most of his game has been “back” for a while, and what he really needs to do is find his power.

Bradley is now hitting .243/.379/.381 on the season. Obviously that’s not what the Cubs hoped to get out of him — the on-base numbers are nice, but they expected those, or better, with some power to go along with them. But that number is seriously depressed by an awful start. Bradley’s .118/.333/.294 April pulls all three of those numbers down a bit.

Still, the lack of slugging is a little worrisome. Here’s a chart of Bradley’s average, OBP, Slugging and OPS over the course of the season. All of them are trending generally upward, but over the last twenty games or so his average and slugging have basically been flat or actually trending downward. He’s taking his walks, but most of his hits are singles and they’re not coming that much more frequently.

Over the last 28 days, Bradley was hitting .275/.457/.377. In a way, when a player is getting on base 46 percent of the time over a span, it doesn’t matter what those other two numbers are — I don’t think it’s possible to get on base that much and not help your team immensely.

Still Bradley has never been a huge slugger, but he’s always had decent power - over 162 games he averages 33 doubles and 20 homers. His current season numbers, spread out to 162 games, would be good for 13 homers and 20 doubles. So that’s a fairly substantial drop in power. A couple of weeks ago, Fangraphs suggested that maybe having to play the field was the culprit. I think that’s unlikely, at least on its own - those averages include a lot of seasons where Bradley was spending substantial time in the field. Age might have something to do with it, as well as a change in approach or just luck.

Whatever the case, it will be interesting to see if Bradley can pick up his power bat in the second half. Even if he continued to put up numbers like he has, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. He’s raised his OPS+ to 98, which is just about average. That’s not very good for a right fielder, of course, but that number weights slugging a little more than it should. If he can find a little more power again, though, and add keep getting on base like he has since April ended, he really will be back.