D-backs GM: Archie Bradley has chance to be ‘special in a hurry’
The Arizona Diamondbacks went into their offseason looking to add a power bat, starting pitcher and bullpen help.
Yet what they wanted was not the only thing that helped shape their game plan.
The team’s top pitching prospect, Archie Bradley, was often brought up by other teams when it came to trade ideas. And every time, D-backs GM Kevin Towers said the team’s plans for the right-hander led to them saying no thanks.
“That’s what really came down to some of the decisions at the winter meetings,” Towers told the Hot Stove Show Monday night.
The GM said the names Jeff Samardzija, Chris Sale and David Price were brought up as possible return pieces in deals involving Bradley, but there was little interest from his end in making a deal that meant moving the prized prospect.
“We really feel this guy has a chance to be something special in a hurry,” he said. “He’s had success at every level; he’s very, very competitive and somebody that we think is going to come in and knowing somebody like Archie, he’s not going to come in just trying to win a spot, he’s going to try to be the Opening Day pitcher in Australia.
“So we have to kind of hold him back a little bit. But this guy’s going to get every opportunity to try to make our club.”
The seventh overall selection in the 2011 MLB Amateur Draft out of Broken Arrow High School in Oklahoma, Bradley posted a 12-5 record with a 1.97 ERA in Double-A Mobile last season.
The 20-year-old right-hander has compiled a 26-11 record with a 2.76 ERA in 290 minor league innings, while striking out 318 and walking 153.
Given the current makeup of the team’s starting rotation, it looks like Bradley will be competing with a few others for one final spot, as Patrick Corbin, Wade Miley, Trevor Cahill and Brandon McCarthy are already entrenched as starters.
