The Laser Show

It’s Hall of Fame consideration season.  Until the announcement of the new class, Connections will be looking at some of the names on the 2025 ballot.  

Let’s make a lineup …

C     Thurman Munson

1B   Don Mattingly

2B   Lou Whitaker

3B   Stan Hack

SS   Dave Concepción

LF   Roy White

CF   Bernie Williams

RF   Mike Tiernan

SP  Tommy Bridges

What’s the defining conceit behind this starting nine – any guesses?  

Among all players who played for one and only one franchise and were rejected as worthy of Hall of Fame approval, these are the career bWAR leaders at their respective positions.  Not a bad foundation for a club, for sure – one that would, in a make-believe World Series against the bottom of the barrel Hall of Famers, have a good shot at the trophy.

The 2025 Hall of Fame ballot carries three names that could (depending on the upcoming and future Hall of Fame ballots) appear on an extended version of this particular lineup card:  

~David Wright at third (second in bWAR to Hack), appearing on his second ballot 

~Félix Hernández (third, behind Bridges and Eddie Rommel), appearing on his first ballot

~Second baseman Dustin Pedroia, who trails only Whitaker and is appearing on the ballot for the first time.  

Wright and Pedroia share more than this relegation to the bench on this lineup card (assuming neither gets elected in this upcoming cycle, which is a pretty sure bet):  Pedroia, like Wright, carries the wistful burden of injuries being as consequential a part of his narrative as the accumulated accolades and statistics.  A broken foot.  Sprains (thumb, wrist) and strains (hamstring).  Persistent knee inflammation, cartilage restoration surgery.  Pedroia’s maladies and associated missed time derailed what looked like, through his twenties, the résumé of someone who’d continue to pile on All-Star nods, Gold Gloves and Silver Sluggers, a bevy of doubles and near-200-hit campaigns, opportunities in the postseason to add to the legacy and (maybe) ring count.  Alas, it was not to be.  

Through his age-29 season in 2013, Pedroia had a lot in common with Hall of Fame second baseman Roberto Alomar.  Both had claimed a pair of World Series titles, their rate stats were swap-worthy, and although Alomar had double the number of All-Star appearances, Gold Gloves and Silver Sluggers, Pedroia owned the only MVP and Rookie of the Year Awards among the pair.  By virtue of a significant lead in Defensive WAR for the Red Sox second sacker, their bWAR was fairly close (43.2 for Alomar and 38.0 for Pedroia, in 400 fewer games).  Alomar had started at a much earlier age, but he was a statistical target that seemed reasonable for Pedroia to aim his laser show toward.  Alas, it was not to be.

From 2014-2019, Pedroia spent time on the DL/IL nine separate times – a number underscoring the sadness of seeing him miss nearly half of Boston’s games during that stretch.  He played in only three games in 2018, depriving him of the opportunity to cradle a third World Series trophy.  That season also missed his presence in Boston’s Opening Day lineup, breaking a string of 11 consecutive starts in that pageantry-filled day.  

His added only six more contests to his ledger in 2019, a 21-plate appearance stretch that saw him collect only two hits and get his final start at second base in a mid-April loss to the Yankees (those final six games also dropped his career batting average from .300 to .299 – alas).  There would be no real chase to Alomar’s bar, no sustained valedictory tour as the career numbers were examined alongside the second base greats.  Instead of Pedroia’s final years forcing us to add feats and numbers to the columns in a constant reassessment of his place in history, those last seasons allowed far too much space in which to imagine the vanished possibilities.  

Interestingly, Pedroia’s back half ultimately left him looking – advanced stat-wise – a lot like another Red Sox icon, second baseman Bobby Doerr.  The two even sit side by side on Boston’s all-time bWAR leaders, positioned between David Ortiz and Jim Rice.  In that little snapshot, Pedroia is the only one outside the Hall of Fame (again, expecting that his first time in the ballot will not yield optimistic results).  These are Pedroia’s ultimate coordinates, almost exclusively mapped to a short but high peak, where the accomplishments and numbers could generate all sorts of wondrous similarities and comparisons.  

In 2008, when he was named MVP to become the first AL second baseman to claim the award since Nellie Fox in 1959, Pedroia’s laser show was just that – a beam that attracted gleeful eyes and expressions toward Fenway Park, where an explosively confident ballplayer burst from that small stature.  Even with the first of his injuries (a broken left foot requiring surgery) limiting him to 75 games in 2010, Pedroia’s run from 2006 through 2013 saw him compile 38.0 bWAR, a tally that placed him eighth in the Majors for that span (he also collected the eighth-most doubles in those years).  He was a star:  a five-RBI performance in Game 7 of the 2007 ALCS to lead the Sox to the pennant; the 10th 200-hit, 50-double season ever for a second baseman in 2008; back-to-back runs-scored crowns in 2008 and 2009; recognition as the AL’s top defensive player at any position in 2013; the eighth player ever to fill a personal trophy case with a Rookie of the Year Award, an MVP, a World Series ring and a Gold Glove (he achieved all four of these components by the time he was only three seasons into his career).  Ted Williams and Doerr and Carl Yastrzemski and Rice had fashioned Hall of Fame careers while playing only for the Red Sox; perhaps Pedroia was going to be another.  Alas.

Or maybe Pedroia’s Hall of Fame story will exceed Whitaker’s and Mattingly’s and Wright’s, rendering him ineligible for the lineup that opened this piece.  Perhaps all of the components that made up his individual portrait will resonate in a special way.  Possibly, there is another laser show to come.  We shall see.

Thanks to Baseball Reference and its extraordinary research database, Stathead, for help in assembling this piece.