Injury Cost Dustin Pedroia Any Shot At Hall Of Fame

There is little doubt Dustin Pedroia will go down as one of the all-time favorites of Boston Red Sox fans.

The diminutive second baseman, who announced his retirement Monday, compiled a long list of accomplishments during his 15 year-career, all with the Red Sox. None stand above the three World Series rings he won in 2007, 2013 and 2018.

Pedroia was a key player on those first two teams. He was the head cheerleader and veteran sage on the third, limited to three games in ’18 a year after sustaining a career-altering knee injury.

Pedroia was the 2007 American League Rookie of the Year then was the AL Most Valuable Player the following season. He won four Gold Gloves, was selected to four All-Star Games and captured one Silver Slugger.

He is the only player ever to win Rookie of the Year, MVP, a Gold Glove and a World Series within the first two seasons of his career. Just 10 players in baseball history have pulled off that feat at any point.

Pedroia just missed being a lifetime .300 hitter as his batting average wound up at .299 over 1,512 games. He also hit 140 home runs, stole 138 bases and had an .805 OPS that was 13 percent above league average.

What endeared Pedroia most to fans, though, was his scrappy style of play and a certain cockiness that was, in many ways, charming. While Pedroia’s teammates universally referred to him as “Pedey”, he preferred “Laser Show,” because of his ability to consistently spray line drives from foul line to foul line.

“He was the ultimate team player,” said Terry Francona, who was the Red Sox’s manager during the first six seasons of Pedroia’s career, in a statement released by the team. “He always seemed to save his very best plays for the most important time of the game. He seemed to will himself at times to lead us to victory. It is impossible to spend any amount of time with him and not become close to him. He just has that type of personality.”

Because of Pedroia’s popularity and winning pedigree, it has led some to wonder if he could possible be voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame. While the World Series rings help make a case for Pedrioa, his career statistics do not stack with most Hall of Famers.

Although Pedroia had five seasons with at least 185 hits, he ended up with 1,805 for his career. While that ranked 10^th among players who were considered active in 2020 – though Pedroia did not appear in a game during the pandemic-shortened season, he was still on the Red Sox’s roster on the injured list – it is just 391^st all-time.

For the sake of comparison, Pedroia finished with three fewer hits than Matt Kemp and two more than Roy White. No one would suggest either of those players is worthy of the Hall.

Pedroia fares somewhat better in advanced metrics. He is 179^th all-time in WAR at 51.6. Jay Jaffe’s JAWS metric rates Pedroia as the 20^th-best second baseman in the game’s history.

However, that certainly will not be enough to get Pedroia inducted in Cooperstown.

It is fair to wonder what might have been for Pedroia if he wouldn’t had his knee severely injured on a late slide by Manny Machado, then on the Baltimore Orioles, while trying to break up a double play during a game in 2017.

While Pedroia gutted it out to play in 105 games that season, he ended up needing six surgical procedures on the knee. That limited him to three games in 2018, six in 2019, none in 2020 and eventually forced him into retirement.

Could Pedroia, who career was effectively ended at 34, have compiled Hall of Fame-type statistics if he stayed healthy? It’s possible, though we’ll never know for sure.

Thus, Pedroia will have to settle for the Hall of Very Good – and exulted status in Red Sox Nation along with those three World Series rings – rather than Cooperstown.

That’s not a bad consolation prize.