![\"MLB](\"https:\/\/www.bostonherald.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/migration\/2018\/05\/26\/052618redsoxmw002.jpg?w=1860\")
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This Monday the Baseball Hall of Fame will unveil its ballot for the upcoming 2025 class, and this year\u2019s newcomers include some of the greatest players of the 21st century. Among the headliners are Ichiro Suzuki, who should easily cruise into Cooperstown on the first ballot, and C.C. Sabathia, one of the most decorated starting pitchers of his generation.<\/p>\n
But perhaps the most interesting newcomer is one who has little chance of earning induction this year, if ever.<\/p>\n
Former Red Sox great Dustin Pedroia will be on the Hall of Fame ballot for the first time, and his candidacy is complicated. Few would dispute his place as one of the most impactful second basemen of the modern era, but his career was also cut short by injuries, preventing him from reaching the career benchmarks that usually serve as requirements to reach Cooperstown.<\/p>\n
How he fares, and to what extent voters take those injuries into account, will tell us a lot about how much emphasis the current electorate places on peak performance versus longevity.<\/p>\n
Pedroia was a four-time All-Star, a four-time Gold Glove winner, a two-time World Series champion and a Silver Slugger winner. He won Rookie of the Year in 2007, followed that up with an MVP season in 2008 and finished top-10 in the MVP vote twice more later on.<\/p>\n
He also compiled 51.9 wins above replacement for his career, which ranks 19th all-time among players who played 75% of their games at second base, and over 10 seasons between 2007-16 he averaged 5.1 WAR per season, which equates to All-Star level production over an entire decade.<\/p>\n
At his best Pedroia was clearly a Hall of Fame talent, but unlike most greats, he did not enjoy the luxury of a slow and steady decline through his mid-to-late 30s.<\/p>\n
Pedroia\u2019s last productive season came in 2017, when he was limited to 105 games due to left knee soreness thanks in part to the infamous play where Manny Machado spiked him during a close play at second base. Pedroia underwent a complete cartilage restoration the following offseason but never fully recovered. He only appeared in three games in 2018 and six games in 2019 before calling it a career at age 35.<\/p>\n
If not for the fact that he went 3 for 31 in the nine games he played over his final two years, Pedroia would have finished with a .300 batting average for his career instead of his actual final average of .299. Had he stayed healthy he also would\u2019ve finished with more than 1,805 career hits, which would put him near the bottom of all Hall of Famers and would represent the lowest total by any Hall of Fame inductee who played after 1960.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s easy to game out an alternate reality where Pedroia stays healthy, gets to 2,500 career hits and 60 WAR, and wins a third ring as part of the 2018 World Series championship team. In that world Pedroia is a borderline Hall of Fame lock, but that\u2019s not how things played out and now it\u2019s unclear if he\u2019ll even manage the 5% he\u2019d need to stay on the ballot another year.<\/p>\n
There is precedent for voters prioritizing a dominant peak when a career-altering injury is involved, but only under rare circumstances. Sandy Koufax played just 12 seasons before retiring at age 30, and it wasn\u2019t until his seventh year that he made the leap from average to all-time. Catcher Roy Campanella also played just 10 years in MLB, but the three-time MVP would have debuted earlier if not for baseball\u2019s color barrier and probably would have played much longer if he hadn\u2019t been paralyzed in a tragic car accident.<\/p>\n
More likely, Pedroia\u2019s Hall of Fame story will echo that of New York Mets great David Wright, who was similarly dominant in his prime before injuries took their toll. Wright managed just 6.2% of the vote in his first year on the ballot last winter, suggesting that Pedroia\u2019s path to Cooperstown will be a long and difficult one.<\/p>\n Earlier this week news broke that Roki Sasaki, the 23-year-old Japanese ace and perhaps the best pitcher in the world not currently playing in MLB, will be making his long-awaited jump to the big leagues. The Chiba Lotte Marines, Sasaki\u2019s club in Nippon Professional Baseball, announced it intends to post the right-hander this winter, making him available to all 30 MLB clubs.<\/p>\n Once that happens, Sasaki will immediately become one of the most highly coveted free agents on the market.<\/p>\n Sasaki first rose to prominence stateside with his eye-opening performance in the 2023 World Baseball Classic, when he struck out 11 batters over 7.2 innings while pitching alongside Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto in Japan\u2019s eventual championship victory. During the tournament his fastball averaged 100 mph and maxed out at nearly 102, and his splitter and slider were similarly ridiculous.<\/p>\n His numbers in Japan also look like something out of a video game. In four NPB seasons he posted a 2.10 ERA with 505 strikeouts over just 394.2 innings, and throughout his career he\u2019s drawn consistent interest from MLB scouts, who view Sasaki as a future No. 1 starter.<\/p>\n Ordinarily a talent like Sasaki would command a huge deal on the open market, but because he is under 25 and has less than six years of service time in NPB he will be considered an international free agent and is subject to international bonus pool money restrictions. Basically, that means he\u2019ll be limited to whatever international bonus money clubs have available, which could theoretically approach $7.5 million but in practice will probably be much less than that.<\/p>\n Compared to what he\u2019ll eventually earn in salary arbitration and free agency down the road, the difference in what Sasaki can get from any given team upfront is negligible. So whoever he signs with will instead come down to personal preference, making his situation more akin to a pre-NIL college recruitment.<\/p>\n Though the widespread belief is that the Los Angeles Dodgers are the heavy favorites to land Sasaki, other clubs \u2014 including the Red Sox \u2014 could potentially make a compelling pitch.<\/p>\n What might Boston\u2019s look like?<\/p>\n If Sasaki wants to sign with a franchise where he can develop and reach his full potential, the Red Sox could point to their newly overhauled pitching infrastructure and the promising early returns shown during Craig Breslow\u2019s first season as chief baseball officer. Boston now has three proven homegrown starters, one of whom just earned his first All-Star nod, and numerous others made impressive strides in the minors this past year.<\/p>\n If Sasaki wants to compete for a World Series title, the Red Sox could sell him on their emerging young core and the idea that he could become the centerpiece of a championship-caliber rotation. That may sound rich to the cynical-minded in the fanbase, but the Red Sox brass have been talking a big game all offseason both publicly and privately. If a couple of blockbusters do come to fruition before Sasaki is posted, the idea of Boston as a championship contender may not seem so farfetched.<\/p>\n If Sasaki wants to play somewhere he\u2019d be comfortable, the Red Sox have a long and established track record of success working with Japanese players. The club previously integrated pitchers like Daisuke Matsuzaka, Koji Uehara and Junichi Tazawa \u2014 all of whom were key pieces on World Series championship teams \u2014 and the club currently employs Sasaki\u2019s international teammate Masataka Yoshida along with several Japanese-speaking staff members.<\/p>\n And if Sasaki wants to be in the spotlight? Well, he\u2019d get plenty of attention in Los Angeles, but he\u2019ll never be the main guy as long as Ohtani is around. In Boston he\u2019d immediately become one of the biggest stars on one of the most famous MLB clubs in the world.<\/p>\n Will all of that be enough to outcompete the Dodgers or the Yankees for Sasaki\u2019s services? Who can say. But for a club that\u2019s placed such a premium on acquiring talented young arms, Sasaki would represent a franchise-altering coup.<\/p>\n This month many of baseball\u2019s brightest young stars are getting a chance to shine during the WBSC Premier12 Tournament, which features the world\u2019s 12 highest ranked national teams and is arguably the biggest international baseball tournament outside of the World Baseball Classic and the Olympics.<\/p>\n Though big leaguers are ineligible to compete, numerous highly regarded prospects are taking part, including Australia\u2019s Travis Bazzana, the No. 1 overall pick in this past summer\u2019s draft.<\/p>\n Team USA\u2019s roster also features a distinctly local flavor.<\/p>\n Matt Shaw, Ryan Ward and Cam Devanney, all minor leaguers who played high school ball in Massachusetts, are on the USA roster. Shaw is a top Chicago Cubs prospect and a former Worcester Academy great from Brimfield, Ward is a Millbury native in the Los Angeles Dodgers system, and Devanney is a Kansas City Royals minor leaguer and a former Central Catholic star.<\/p>\n Shaw, baseball\u2019s No. 22 prospect according to MLB Pipeline, is one of Team USA\u2019s top players and went 11 for 19 (.579) with two home runs, 12 RBI and a 1.662 OPS to lead the offense. Ward led Team USA in home runs with four in five games while batting .333 with 10 RBI, and Devanney started the tournament opener and is 0 for 2 with two walks.<\/p>\n Also playing for Team USA is Rich Hill, the Milton native and 20-year MLB veteran who briefly pitched for the Red Sox again this past season and who didn\u2019t allow an earned run in 6.1 innings over two tournament appearances. The team is managed by former Angels skipper Mike Scioscia and features former Red Sox manager Ron Roenicke as bench coach and pitching coach Dave Wallace in the same role.<\/p>\n Team USA spent the past week in Mexico, where it went 3-2 and finished runner-up in Group A to earn a spot in the Super Round. The team will now fly to Tokyo, Japan, where it will play each of the other final four qualifiers in another round robin. The top two finishes will advance to the championship game and the third and fourth teams will play for the bronze medal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dustin Pedroia was one of the greatest second basemen of his generation, but injuries could cost the former Red Sox star a place in the Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":8862,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[73,506,503,505,508,509,74,507,504],"class_list":["post-8861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb","tag-boston-red-sox","tag-cam-devanney","tag-dustin-pedroia","tag-matt-shaw","tag-premier12","tag-premier12-tournament","tag-red-sox","tag-rich-hill","tag-roki-sasaki"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"MLB](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bostonherald.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/11\/AP24314604501082.jpg?fit=620%2C9999px&ssl=1\")
Could Sox land Sasaki?<\/h4>\n
Locals suiting up for Team USA<\/h4>\n