Winter is a long time. Those dark mornings and evenings of cold temperatures where you have to scrap the ice off your car windows, the months of grey skies and wet conditions not only make the baseball season feel a long way away but also it makes it feel like we are on a different planet.
Myself, like I’m assuming many others here in the baseball world, have little milestones throughout the offseason to keep us going until we can celebrate hearing the shout of “play ball!” again. The winter meetings in December where we get to play general manager and decide if our trades are making us either contenders or pretenders for the following spring.
My personal favourite winter milestone of “Truck Day” is when bats, balls and gloves for spring training get loaded onto a truck outside Fenway Park, where only it seems in baseball that seeing pictures of equipment being put on a truck can cause such happiness and hope that warmer times are not that far away.
There is, however, another milestone in the winter, and that is the Hall of Fame class announcement. It is where the baseball writers decide which players who have been retired for five years are worthy of the greatest reward in a career for an individual career.
It has finally happened that I’ve now reached an age where a player is on the ballot sheet that I saw play in his rookie season. This is now a test of my opinion and to overlook the heart and use the mind in a fair manner. It will be tough with my guy Dustin Pedroia.
‘Pedey’, as he was affectionately known in Beantown, made his rookie season in a popular season for the Red Sox in a World Series victory year of 2007. He was famously known for pulling a lead-off homer over the monster in Game 1 in that series against the Colorado Rockies, but his ability to spray the ball all over the field was his skill with the bat, while his glove at second base was his real strength winning four gold gloves but it was his playing style that won the hearts of many including mine.
Being only 5’9” in height, he was told growing up that he was too small to make it in the bigs. This created the chip in his shoulder to prove those doubters wrong. He played each defensive play and each at-bat as if it was his last. This blue-collar approach was similar to others, such as Hunter Pence for the Giants are my kind of ball players. Someone who acts like he was taken out of the stands but has extraordinary talent, are easy players to relate to.
His WAR (wins above replacement) of 51.9 would be higher than a lot of Hall of Famers particularly in the second base position. From 2007-17, Pedroia easily led all second basemen with 102 defensive runs saved. Only five players in all of baseball had more DRS over that span, regardless of position. These are two reasons why he should be considered for the Hall of Fame.
So what’s the problem, I hear you ask? A popular player with great defensive numbers that contributed so much to two World Series championships is surely a shoo-in?
Well, there is a slight problem. On a fateful day in April 2017, at a play over the second base bag, Pedroia was on the receiving end of a hard slide from Baltimore’s Manny Machado. While I would find it too horrifying to think that Maxhardo meant to cause the result of this injury (not many others in Red Sox nation would be so kind!) I do think he did intend it to be one to cause pain to Dustin. This act is why I, amongst many others, will always boo his name for the rest of his career.
The consequence of this act meant that Dustin only played nine times afterwards in the final two years of his playing career. In reality though, the injury probably lost him closer to at least five years of a career.
His 1,800 hits, while good, would have been around 2,700 on his career projection of a batting average just under .300 would have been the final segment of his stats that I think would have got him into Cooperstown.
So looking back to the January just gone, and it was the first year that Dustin Pedroia was on the Hall of Fame ballot. Going into it, I was in more hope than expectation that he would even get the 5% of votes needed to even stay on the ballot. He got 11.9% of the vote so he gets to fight another year. I do believe if he can survive all 10 years of his eligibility on the ballot that will be a massive achievement and one that would be richly deserved.
Regardless of what happens in the next few years, you can only celebrate the career of Dustin Pedroia. He was inducted into the Red Sox Hall of Fame in 2022, and his three world championships* can never be taken away from him. Hopefully, one day, we will see him back in the uniform in some sort of coaching capacity.
Thank you Dustin!
*Pedroia won three World Series rings with the Red Sox (2007, 2013 and 2018), though he was injured for most of the team’s title run in 2018.
Article by Andrew Osborn. Hopefully, you will see more Red Sox content from Andrew on Bat Flips & Nerds this season.
Featured image of Dustin Pedroia by by Billie Weiss/Boston Red Sox/Getty Images
STOP PRESS: Bat Flips & Nerds recently conducted our own Hall of Fame ballot among writers, contributors, and pals. Like Andrew, we too have lots of love for Dustin Pedroia, who appeared on 31% of the ballots. You can see the full results here.
