The Boston Red Sox selected Dustin Pedroia, SS, with their first draft pick. The following are excerpts from various sources on Pedroia. I have bolded the most interesting facets of Pedroia’s game:
Dustin PedroiaMLB.com says
PHYSICALLY MAXED OUT. SMALL, SCRAPPY FRAME W/ AVG STRENGTH FOR SIZE. SIMILAR TO DAVID ECKSTEIN. EVEN STANCE W/ FLEXED KNEES. SMALL LOAD & WEIGHT SHIFT. STEPS IN BUCKET. AVG BAT SPEED, EVEN PLANE BAT CONTROL W/ CONSISTENT CONTACT. HITS WHERE PITCHED. LOTS OF DOUBLES TO GAPS. INSTINCTIVE DEFENDER W/ SOFT HANDS, WORKS GROUND-UP, BALL DISAPPEARS. PLAYS WELL ABOVE TOOLS. HEADSY BASEBALL RAT W/ PLUS INSTINCTS. KNOWS HOW TO PLAY THE GAME. GUY YOU WANT ON YOUR TEAM. DOES WHAT IT TAKES TO WIN.
From the Arizona State Sun Devils (link 1, link 2) comes the following:
Pedroia (Woodland, Calif.) finished a close second for earning his second consecutive Pac-10 player of the Year award, but became only the fourth player in ASU history and 22nd in Pac-10 history to earn first-team all-conference honors three straight years. The junior shortstop heads into the NCAA Tournament hitting .395 (92-for-233) with a league-leading 24 doubles, nine home runs and 48 RBI.
Has put together one of the best individual career performances in ASU Baseball history
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Like I said earlier, I think Pokey Reese is really opening eyes in Boston. And I’m just now digging through Bill James’ (tome-like) Historical Baseball Abstracts, and you’d be surprised how important middle IF defense actually is to winning ballclubs. Or maybe you wouldn’t be surprised, I don’t know, but I am. The Sox have never been high on defense before, see, not in my lifetime.
Except this guy Pedroia isn’t just Pokey Reese. He’s Bill Mueller’s hitting, Mark Bellhorn’s batting eye, Pokey’s defense, and Kevin Millar’s clubhouse presence. All very important elements. Hypothetical question: do you think Theo would’ve let Eckstein walk, like the Duke did?
But I don’t think the Red Sox will ever field an especially home-grown team. The money is there, and if this management group is serious about winning, they’ll keep the farms churning out a steady flow of solid players while continuing to add topflight free agents.
Granted, I hope we never become as loose and easy with our young prospects as the Steinbrenner’s MFY’s: but, that said, I still think Theo & Co. will view our large revenue stream as a weapon to be employed, not as a treasure to be hoarded.
With the fans in Boston being as passionate as they are (passion being observable in dollars signs), it’ll never really make sense for Boston to adhere strictly to the “replace from within” philosophy of the A’s and Twinkies.
Side note, somewhat relavent, when I was hearing the Beltran to Boston rumors, I kept hearing that KC wanted pitching: TSN suggested that Boston might land Edwin Jackson from LA with a Youkilis/AMart package and reroute Jackson to KC in exchange for Beltran. But if we land Jackson from LA, wouldn’t we be better off just keeping him?
I’d be interested in reading a little excerpt on how middle IF defense helps. Mind typing a piece of it out?
“Except this guy Pedroia isn
Let’s not even talk about trading A-Mart and ESPECIALLY NOT Youks…
Would I mind typing it out? Would I mind typing it out? Son, when I called this book “tome-like,” did you think I was kidding you?
But all right, here goes. From Bill James’ (The New) Historical Baseball Abstract, excerpts from pages 79-82, from the the chapter on the 1900’s:
” . . . [the Chicago Cubs]won 986 [games] between 1904 and 1913, which is a record for wins over a ten-year period.
It has become common to bash the selection of [Joe] Tinker, [Johnny] Evers, and [Frank] Chance to the Hall of Fame, saying that Franklin P. Adams’ famous poem put them in. It is easy to quote their batting statistics, which are marginally impressive, to show that the trio does not belong–and indeed they may not. But at the same time, this is perilously near an absurd argument, to wit: Tinker, Evers, and Chance were not really great ballplayers, they merely happened to win a huge number of games. The definition of a great ballplayer is a ballplayer who helps his team to win a lot of games.
I go back and forth on this issue; sometimes I think they were great players, sometimes I think not. But if you’re going to say that these guys DON’T belong in the Hall of Fame, it seems to me, you have to deal somehow with the phenomenal success of their team. This team won more games, over any period of years, than the Yankees with Ruth and Gehrig, than the Dodgers with Robinson, Reese, Snider, and Campy, more games with the Reds with Bench, Morgan, Rose, and Concepcion–more games than anybody. When you start explaining their wins, as Ricky Ricardo would say, you’ve got a lot of ’splaining to do.
Is the rest of the team so great that no weight need be carried by these three players?
It is not. The catcher, Johnny Kling, was good, but probably not as good as any of the three. Third baseman Harry Steinfeldt was in the same range. No outfielder on the team was Ty Cobb or Babe Ruth or Mickey Mantle; none was even Tris Speaker or Al Simmons or Duke Snider.
When you look carefully at the Cubs of those years, it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that this team won more games with infield defense than any other team in the history of baseball. First of all, they won more GAMES than any other team in the history of baseball. And they didn’t do it with .350 hitters, and they didn’t do it with 40 homer men.
Their pitching was good. Three Finger Brown was great; the rest of the staff was good. But it is also apparent that the Cubs’ defense was so good that anybody they put on the mound was effective. Nineteen pitchers pitched 150 or more innings for the Cubs in their ten best years, 1904-1913. Seventeen of those 19 pitchers posted ERA’s below 3.00, including guys like Chick Fraser, Buttons Briggs, and Orvall Overall who had never had comparable success with other teams. Even Three Finger Brown had been acquired by the Cubs after posting a 9-13 record for the Cardinals as a rookie in 1903.
The essential question is this: if Tinker, Evers, and Chance were not great players, how do you explain the success of this team? The Yankees of 1936-1945 had DiMaggio, Dickey, Gehrig for a couple of years, Red Ruffing, Lefty Gomez, Lazzeri, and Joe Gordon at second, Red Rolfe, Tommy Henrich, Johnny Murphy, George Selkirk, Frankie Crosetti, and numerous other stars. The Yankees had enough success to justify the brilliant reputations those men still enjoy–but they couldn’t match the win totals of the Cubs.”
Bill James, folks. See also page 103, if you’re interested in digging up more (on your own time).
Very interesting, thanks for typing it out.
By the way, I don’t think I’m looking too high for Pedroia when I say,
“Except this guy Pedroia isn