It looks like everything is coming up MVP 78!
http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/redsox/2017/10/10/dustin-pedroia-contemplates-surgery-and-his-future/Kthma2B2bgDOSUi2gcBJiI/story.html
For members of the Red Sox, the final images of Dustin Pedroia in 2017 were hard to watch: The out at third base in Game 1 that highlighted his eroded speed; the lost footing on a routine grounder in Game 2; the wheelhouse pitches that he’s spent a career driving off and over the Green Monster but that he could not, in Game 3, drive beyond the outfield grass; and finally, his inability even to run all the way to first base on his series-concluding ground out to second in Game 4.
With his left knee essentially shot, Pedroia had nothing left. And now, at 34, he enters an offseason of considerable uncertainty.
Offseason surgeries — on knees, wrists, and fingers — have become almost an annual rite of passage for Pedroia. This winter might be different. Pedroia spent virtually the entire season playing on the injured left knee, one that required surgery last offseason and that seemingly never recovered from the hard slide by Orioles third baseman Manny Machado on April 21. President of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said during the season that the issue is one he’ll have to manage for the rest of his career.
“It was [difficult],” Pedroia conceded of his season, “but it was for a lot of guys.”
He required three separate stints on the disabled list, including two for his knee that cost him virtually all of August. While he posted a solid average (.293) and a strong .369 OBP, his power was sapped (.392 slugging) for most of the season outside of July — just before his knee prevented him from playing for nearly five weeks.
While Pedroia initially enjoyed a two-week surge upon his September return, and his efforts to contribute drew considerable admiration in the clubhouse, his production nosedived starting with a 15-inning game Sept. 15.
Starting with that 0-for-9 contest, he went 3 for 36 to conclude the regular season and 2 for 16 in the playoffs, culminating in Sunday’s 0 for 5 in which his called strikeout with the bases loaded and one out in the second inning stifled a rally and led to the ejection of manager John Farrell.
His struggles against Houston continued a pattern. Perhaps because he’s been injured at the finish line of several recent seasons, his postseason numbers have been poor dating to 2009, with the second baseman posting a .211/.274/.274 line in his last 26 playoff games starting with the 2009 ALDS sweep at the hands of the Angels.
Meanwhile, the knee injury impaired other potential contributions. His defensive range may have been diminished. He graded as two runs below an average second baseman, according to Baseball Information Solutions (Fangraphs, by contrast, had him as 6.7 runs above average, as measured by Ultimate Zone Rating). His baserunning ranked near the bottom of the league, as he took an extra base just 16 percent of the time on hits while getting thrown out seven times.
Unquestionably, Pedroia was limited on the field, while spending significant time on the sidelines. Now, the question looms as to whether a solution is in sight.
Pedroia said after Monday’s season-ending loss that he would be examined Tuesday to figure out a proper course of action, including whether surgery might be necessary. That said, the potential procedure sounds like one that could affect his availability in 2018.
“I’m going to go talk to the doctors about that,” Pedroia said when asked if he’d need surgery. “Obviously we had to try and find a way to do what we did so I could be out there.
“But if you were to get it fixed, the recovery is a long time, so I have a lot of things to weigh in with the doctors and figure it out.”
Health is the foremost issue that hovered over Pedroia this year, but it wasn’t the only one. The retirement of David Ortiz unquestionably changed the clubhouse dynamic. Pedroia, the team’s longest-tenured player, was expected to assume a larger leadership role.
Publicly, he didn’t fill the void left by Ortiz (not that anyone necessarily could) — and if anything, he raised questions about the clubhouse culture with the two foremost off-field controversies of the year.
Pedroia’s public criticism of his teammates’ handling of the Machado slide created noise. So, too, did his self-proclamation of leadership in the middle of the controversy regarding David Price’s verbal ambush of Dennis Eckersley. (“For whatever people say from the outside, ‘Oh, we don’t have a leader,’ I’m standing right here, been here for a long time. . . . You don’t see anybody else standing up here, do you?”)
Yet while such incidents made for easy talk-show fodder, within the clubhouse they had little impact. There, both through example and advice, Pedroia remained a cornerstone.
“All the young guys respect him,” said third base coach Brian Butterfield. “He does a lot of things behind closed doors that nobody knows about. It’s very different [from being a public face of the organization] but it’s very effective.”
Nonetheless, injuries tend to make it more difficult for players to lead. And at a time when the Sox lineup is now defined chiefly by its emerging young core, a leadership transition may be inevitable — partly behind closed doors, where the Sox hope to see some of their now-established young big leaguers become leaders, and publicly, where another player might be more comfortable speaking for the team.
“The culture is changing,” acknowledged Butterfield. “We always remind [the young players] that the culture is changing but we’re not there yet. Whenever we have cultural breakdowns, which happen over the course of the year, it’s up to those guys to police themselves.
“Buck Showalter always told me when I was a young coach in the big leagues, starting in the Yankees organization, that the best clubhouse you can have is a clubhouse that polices itself.
“I feel like we’re gaining that here. There are enough guys doing it right, understand what the proper culture is. It’s getting more and more where they’re policing themselves.
“It doesn’t always have to be on [the manager]. It doesn’t always have to be on coaches to reprimand behind closed doors.
“Pedroia does a good job of talking to guys individually. It’s not confronting. It’s a respectful way of saying, ‘You can’t do that.’ We’re not there [with the young players] yet, but that’s OK, as long as the graph keeps going up.”
Pedroia, Butterfield said, is a part of ensuring that it does just that. Yet at age 34, with 12 big league seasons of wear on his body, he may be approaching a crossroads related to at least his on-field role, if he hasn’t already arrived at it.
Pedroia enters the offseason — perhaps for the first time of his career — as something of an uncertainty, with a need to figure out not only how to restore the health of his knee but also what role and workload might best permit him to maintain it.
Yet those considerations about the future were not the ones that weighed on him as he left the Red Sox clubhouse Monday.
“You deal with a lot of stuff all year to get to this point,” said Pedroia. “When it ends, it stinks, man. It’s just tough. Tough to deal with. That’s really all I can say.”
