I’ve see a lot of people talk about Dustin Pedroia and his Hall of Fame case. So here’s my argument.
The longevity piece is obviously not there with Pedroia. His career WAR is 51.9. The average WAR of a hall of fame 2nd baseman is 69.6, with the lowest hall of fame second base WAR being 63.8.
Since Pedroia had a career ending injury, you can look at his JAWS, which looks at his peak WAR in a 7 year span. Pedroia’s JAWS is 46.5, with the average hall of fame JAWS for a 2nd baseman being 57.1.
I’m a huge Pedroia guy. But unfortunately the injury probably prevented him from having a shot at the hall of fame. The peak years were not as dominant as they would need to be for a player who had a shorter career.
P.S: If you don’t look at advanced metrics like WAR to compare hall of fame talent, I don’t know how you actually compare players. With the game changing over the years, you need some kind of stat to tell a player’s overall value.
@rossfromboston@cushmanMLB Also all this “he’s bad defensively” talk isn’t really backed by what I saw last year. I wouldn’t say great but I wouldn’t say bad. People just keeping riding that narrative bc they were told that by the media when he came over from Japan.