Arizona Diamondbacks’ Hall: Archie Bradley will be up at some point ‘very soon’
Mar 13, 2014, 5:13 PM | Updated: 5:13 pm
No doubt the Arizona Diamondbacks are anxious to turn to Archie Bradley.
Their top prospect, he has impressive stuff and has experienced success at every stop along his baseball career.
“I think we all want to see him,” D-backs president and CEO Derrick Hall told Doug and Wolf on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM Thursday. “We’ve got to remember, the kid hasn’t even had two full minor league seasons.
“I think he’s ready, we all do, and what we’ve seen has been very impressive.”
Hall added the team is excited to see how Bradley, just 21 years of age, fares in Australia when he gets the start in an exhibition game.
“He’s looked great; I think there’s no doubt at some point, probably even this season, he’s with us,” Hall said. “Whether it’s Opening Day, midway through into the season — I think he’s shown us all that he’s a big league pitcher.”
In two Cactus League starts, Bradley has pitched 6.1 innings and allowed zero runs while striking out nine and walking four.
Though he has just 290 minor league innings under his belt and the team may even prefer to leave him in the minors just a bit longer to prolong his future free agency, it may be getting to the point where his supreme talent trumps all other factors.
“He’s got some of the best stuff on the club, obviously,” Hall noted. “Power arm, big-size kid who’s ready to go. Nothing scares him.
“But, we created all this depth in the rotation so that we wouldn’t have to rush him along. And we had a feeling he was going to have a great spring and make that decision tough. It’s a good problem to have.”
Then again, injuries throughout the rotation may ease the burden of having to make a decision.
Depending on how long both Trevor Cahill and Bronson Arroyo are out, the D-backs may need to dip into the depth a bit.
“If Bronson’s not ready Opening Day, you may look to Randall Delgado,” Hall said. “If for some reason Cahill is not responding the way we think he is or the way he looked [Wednesday], he looked fine, well then yeah, you may have to look at going with Archie if you don’t go with a [Josh] Collmenter.
“Again, we do have the depth and that’s good, but there’s no doubt he’s going to be up here at some point very soon and he’s going to be very effective.”
