Presenting the Red Sox American League Championship Series MVP

(Photo: NBC Sports)

Eric D. Schabell
Contributing Writer

While in Houston's Minute Maid park the chants of MVP have died out to the faint sounds of lingering Red Sox revellers, the ALCS winners partied in the visitors clubhouse dumping champagne on their newly crowned ALCS MVP.

Jackie Bradley Jr., famous for his amazing defence, was not having a great year at the plate.

All of that has been wiped away with a few swings of the bat in the ALCS and he is reaping the benefits.


CBSSports called it an 'understatement' to call Bradley clutch in the ALCS.

Bradley had a slow regular season, slashing .234/.314/.403 in 144 games. It's not really what you would call premium offense for an MVP, but due to his walks and power he put up a 1.067 OPS for the series. He crushed two home runs, walked four times, had a double, scored three times and racked up a crazy nine RBI's.

It's only fitting that a crowd chanting "MVP... MVP..." as Alex Bregman led off for the Astros would have to see the MVP title for this series escape their star third baseman. Bregman was mashing a .556 AVG in the ALDS, but pretty much became invisible with a .187 AVG in the ALCS.

Trolling the Red Sox pitcher Nathan Eovaldi on Instagram didn't help Bregman once the series was over, as the Red Sox made sure he heard about it.


While Bregman struggled in the series, Bradley raked starting with a double in game 2 to reclaim the lead. In game 3 his grand slam moon shot in the eighth-inning tipped the game from 5-4 deficit towards Boston leading by 6-5. All these came with two outs.

Oh yeah, did we mention he is the Red Sox no. 9 hitter?

While winning 108 games in the regular season, nobody seemed to hold any faith in the Red Sox beating the Astros (most predictions leaned towards Red Sox losing in six games). It's quite the feat to take this magical regular season and tip it on its head. They've given us an epic defeat of the New York Yankees, which we thought couldn't get any better.

Who'll ever forget game 4 as the lead jumped back and forth, where a home run was transformed into an out, where Craig Kimbrel raised the blood pressure of most of New England, and Andrew Benintendi makes a game saving last out diving catch in left field.

Enjoy your ALCS champion Red Sox over the coming weekend and toast your ALCS MVP Bradley.

Next week Tuesday, it's back to work.

Just four more wins to put 2018 into the books as the epic record breaking Red Sox season that it was.

Post a comment or via twitter @erics_redsox with your thoughts.

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