13 replies to this topic

[CaptainLaddie]

Dustin Pedroia has been a one-man wrecking crew recently. Since June 5 (not including tonight), his slash line is .380/.481/.705. He's walked 26 times and struck out 11 with 23 extra-base hits. It seems his early-season rust has been shaken off and he's becoming the Pedey we all know and love.

A fun comparison: entering tonight, Pedroia and Cano had each had 351 at-bats and 49 strikeouts. The difference? Pedroia has 45 more walks than Cano (and only two less home runs).

Not to make this a Pedey splooge-fest, but the guy has been a monster. This is what he was doing last year before getting hurt; I fully expect him to come back down a bit, but if he ended up with a 140 OPS+ at this point I wouldn't be shocked.

He's got a WAR of 5.1 right now (Fangraphs WAR). good for 4th in all of baseball. He's a legitimate MVP candidate (if you don't think Bautista should get consideration because he's on a 4th place team, albeit a 4th place team that would probably be first in most other divisions) after a really mediocre start.

Edited by CaptainLaddie, 18 July 2011 - 03:13 AM.

[BucketOBalls]

CaptainLaddie, on 18 July 2011 - 03:01 AM, said:

He's got a WAR of 5.1 right now (Fangraphs WAR). good for 4th in all of baseball. He's a legitimate MVP candidate (if you don't think Bautista should get consideration because he's on a 4th place team, albeit a 4th place team that would probably be first in most other divisions) after a really mediocre start.

Fangraphs has Ellsbury with a 5.0 war. Although the only way Bautista doesn't get the MVP with a 1+ WAR lead is if he majorly falls off a cliff or gets hurt. (Although that worked for Pedroia before).

[John DiFool]

I'm hoping that this is the year that Pedroia starts making a preliminary HoF case (note the exact phrasing nitpickers)-if he can run off 4 straight 6-8 WAR seasons from ages 27-30, he'd be looking pretty good going into his 30's, and then it would just be a matter of aging and counting stats. Then again I thought the same thing about Nomar thru his age 29 season...

[Snodgrass'Muff]

Since mid season UZR numbers are unreliable, just looking at his offensive output, he's 18th in the majors in wRC+ so far. He's 8th in the AL (just behind Youk, Gonzalez is third in the AL, Ortiz is 5th and Ellsbury is 11th) and even tossing UZR out the window because of the small sample size, he's looked amazing on defense all season. It's astounding how good he's been this year and how impressively he's returned from such a serious injury last year.

It's also really impressive how many of the league's top offsensive players are in the Red Sox line up right now. This offense is truly ridiculous.

[Smiling Joe Hesketh]

Pedroia had three hits last night. The rest of the lineup went 2 for 45.

[Savin Hillbilly]

On June 5 he woke up with a .673 OPS. This morning he woke up at .866. In the intervening 34 games, he has batted .382/.482/.699/1.180. His counting numbers during that stretch, if pro-rated to 162 games, would give him 248 hits, 67 doubles, 43 HR, 129 BB, 153 runs scored and 134 RBI.

Right now, he's Babe Ruth.

[Saints Rest]

Not to mention being Frankie Fritsch/Roberto Alomar/Frank White with the glove.

[DavidTai]

Apparently he's a Muddy Chicken, too.

http://espn.go.com/b...t-muddy-chicken

[Savin Hillbilly]

As for his actuall Hall prospects, I think he's got a shot if he can play 2B through age 36 (which is when Robbie Alomar retired) with a late, gentle offensive decline and little time lost to injury. That's asking a lot, especially given his size and the way he plays, but it's not implausible. He'll have a RoY, at least one MVP, probably several Gold Gloves and (hopefully) at least 2 or 3 WS rings to call on, so if he can even approach Alomar's counting stats, he could make it.

[LesterFan]

CaptainLaddie, on 18 July 2011 - 03:01 AM, said:

He's got a WAR of 5.1 right now (Fangraphs WAR). good for 4th in all of baseball.

Now it's 5.4, second best in baseball.

[TFisNEXT]

I noticed Pedroia has only struck out 13 times since May 26th (43 games) after striking out 37 times before that (48 games) while his walks are not down too much (29 to 35 in the same respective time spans). This has effectively turned him into a monster at the plate.

I used May 26th for the K threshold, but as we have heard from Tito, the real transformation might have been after he heard the good news on his knee during that June 9th appointment. Its hard to think that was just coincidence.

[tims4wins]

Just read that Pedroia leads the AL in fouling off pitches in 2-strike counts, with 150 total this season

[Super Nomario]

TFisNEXT, on 18 July 2011 - 11:08 PM, said:

I used May 26th for the K threshold, but as we have heard from Tito, the real transformation might have been after he heard the good news on his knee during that June 9th appointment. Its hard to think that was just coincidence.

There might be something to this, but Pedroia's always been streaky, too. He hit .182/.308/.236 in April '07, .222/.282/.287 in June '09, and .213/.325/.333 in May of last season. His .227/.331/.309 in May of this year doesn't stand out in that group of bad Pedroia months. It might have just been a cold streak, with his current hot streak following.

[John DiFool]

Seems like he struggles in the cold months (moreso that other players), but typically hits like crazy in June/July/August.