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Peds up over .300 @ .302.. your right, we need a crisp thread

This thread = HAHAHA. YOU LOSE.

GreenerPastures wrote:I think he is by far our most overrated prospect. They have hopes of him being the next David Eckstein... except, he hasn't proven much at all since his September callup from last season. He is a diminutive dude who doesn't seem to possess the necessary drive to want to maximize all his (limited) God given abilities, like a David Eckstein.

I say why not start Cora. He's quite a bit better at this point. He can do it with the glove and with the bat, as he's shown. If you can do even better, then great. If not, get this bum out of there.

god that's embarassing.

Time to lock this thread?

No. It stays open forever. I plan to sticky it at the end of the season so people won't make similar threads next year.

I was only kidding

After rough start, Pedroia dusting the competition
By Bob Ryan, Globe Columnist | June 3, 2007

On the 54th day, Dustin batted second.

You sure couldn't say you saw this coming on, say, the 25th day. On the morning of May 2, Dustin Pedroia was hitting .172 and lots of people were of the opinion that it was time for Alex Cora to be the starting second baseman for the Boston Red Sox.

But yesterday Terry Francona posted a Red Sox lineup in which Pedroia was batting second. That's what happens when a guy hits .415 for an entire month, raising his average to .323. With a 3 for 5 yesterday, including an RBI single in the five-run seventh inning of the Sox' 11-6 victory, he is now up to .333.

If ever a guy had a right to gloat, it is Francona. The manager pulled the full Tammy Wynette in April, when his little second sacker was going 5 for 48 in one stretch of 18 games. Day after day, Francona stood by his man, even on days when Cora was doing things like hitting a triple and a homer in the same game at Yankee Stadium.

The kid is our second baseman, he kept saying. The scouts say he'll hit, so he'll hit. Cora is here to back us up at short and second. That's his job. No, I'm not contemplating a switch.

But as April rolled into May, the kid did not hit. And you had to wonder if he ever would hit, since he did not hit when he was called up last September (.191 in 89 at-bats) and he did not hit in Florida, either. Sometimes scouts are wrong.

It now looks as if maybe they weren't wrong, and Francona was wise to believe them. For the past three weeks, no batter, not even Ichiro Suzuki (well, perhaps Kevin Youkilis) has been harder to get out than Pedroia. Facts are facts.

"You want me to say, 'I told you so'?" said Francona. "OK, I told you so. But, no, it was just the right thing to do. We had a young player the organization said can do certain things. We just hadn't seen him do them yet at the major league level. We didn't see it in September, and we didn't see it in spring training. Now he's doing it. For me not to see it would have been a mistake."

At 5 feet 9 inches and a listed 180 pounds, Pedroia sure looks like a second baseman. He was a very good one at Arizona State, where he was a three-time All-Pac-10 selection, the 2003 Pac-10 co-Player of the Year, the 2003 National Defensive Player of the Year, and one of five finalists for the 2004 Golden Spikes Award. In the collegiate world he was a major Somebody, and he was a second-round selection of the Red Sox (their first available selection and No. 65 overall) in the 2004 draft.

In other words, this was no scrappy, overachieving 29th-round pick coming out of nowhere. This was a marquee prospect. And Francona knew that.

"Our expectations were that his gifts -- hand-eye coordination, plate discipline, hands, instincts, confidence, work ethic, guts -- would far all outweigh his physical limitations -- size, speed -- as they did in college and every level of minor league ball," explained general manager Theo Epstein.

Francona also saw the stuff we don't see, such as the hours long before the game working at his craft. That counted for something, too.

"It wasn't a case of a light bulb going off in his head," Francona said. "I think it was the result of a lot of hard work. He struggled, yes, but he didn't put his head down. He was in the cage every day. He put in a lot of long sessions with Mags [hitting coach Dave Magadan]. He got it done in the cage, and then it was a matter of taking it to the field. Eventually, he started getting on top of balls. It wasn't just pushing a button."

He's getting more than just those little-guy hits, too. He's up there to attack baseballs, not caress them. He's got 12 doubles and two homers, and that has given him a robust slugging percentage of .488. No, it's not Jeff Kent, but Jeff Kent could not carry this kid's glove, and that's a fact, too.

If people hadn't yet realized just what Pedroia had become, they learned on the afternoon of May 27. That's when Pedroia battled Texas closer Eric Gagne, he of the ultra heater, for 11 pitches before launching the 12th into the left-field seats for what turned out to be the winning run in a 6-5 Boston victory. Gagne tried everything he could think of to retire the kid, both in repertoire and location, but Pedroia kept spoiling the pitches. It was the at-bat of the year, so far, at least from a Red Sox point of view.

With that at-bat on his r

Bob Ryan sucks.

You sure couldn't say you saw this coming on, say, the 25th day.

You're right. People called it before the season started.

Bleeding Green wrote:Bob Ryan sucks.

You sure couldn't say you saw this coming on, say, the 25th day.

You're right. People called it before the season started.

Haha I think all the people pimping DP preseason made threads like this on the 25th day haha

Bleeding Green wrote:No. It stays open forever. I plan to sticky it at the end of the season so people won't make similar threads next year.

B to the UMP.

hahaha nice thread.

still is horrible.

bump

Bleeding Green wrote:It's just a hot 30 atbat streak that even crappy players have.

You want to go post this on the Brewers board for everybody that wants Tony Gwynn Jr. to start in centerfield?

You don't like Tony Gwynn? I think he could hit .260 with no walks and very little power some day.

Bleeding Green wrote:You don't like Tony Gwynn? I think he could hit .260 with no walks and very little power some day.

You saying he was amazing on the Brewers board isn't going to help me over there.

Go back and read some older threads. I was getting slammed for saying Gabe Gross was better than Gwynn.

I loved the kid all season....I proudly bought a Pedroia shirt on April 22nd at a Yankee-Red Sox game(the 4 home run game) when he was batting .191

MVP MVP MVP MVP MVP

Lol at least he admitted he was owned.