As Devil Rays executive VP (a fancy term they use for GM) Andrew Friedman held court before the game yesterday to discuss his decision to put troubled OF Elijah Dukes on the restricted list, it sounded so eerily familiar to those of us who were around for the final days — couldn’t the whole two years be classified as the “final days”? — of Milton Bradley is a Dodgers uniform. There came a point where anyone who observed the team could tell this was never going to work, and that time seemed to come well before any one inside the organization saw it, or wanted to see it. When Ned Colletti replaced Paul DePodesta as GM, he had the advantage of not being personally invested in Bradley the player (DePo had traded for him), so it was easy for Ned to do what everyone knew had to be done, and it has turned out to be arguably the best trade of his tenure with the Dodgers. A year and a half later, Oakland GM Billy Beane looks like he finally is realizing the same things that Colletti did and that DePo eventually would have if he had stuck around long enough, specifically that Bradley is more trouble than he is worth. And although the D-Rays haven’t come to that conclusion about Dukes just yet, it is evident they are getting there. The A’s designated Bradley for assignment two days ago, one day before the D-Rays put Dukes on their restricted list. The difference in the Dodgers’ dealings with Bradley and the D-Rays’ dealings with Duke? Colletti was fortunate enough to find another team willing to take Bradley, as well as fellow malcontent Antonio Perez, and actually give the Dodgers a valuable player (Andre Ethier) in return. Friedman reportedly tried for weeks to deal Dukes. But with Beane’s Bradley experience possibly on their minds, every GM Friedman talked to passed.