Dustin Pedroia's Gold Glove Season With Red Sox Should Be Blueprint

The Boston Red Sox and others can learn a lot from Dustin Pedroia’s fourth Gold Glove.

Major League Baseball players constantly preach the importance of not letting one facet of the game spill over into other areas when things aren’t going well. Pedroia’s 2014 season was a clinic on successfully accomplishing that goal.

Pedroia suffered a thumb/wrist injury early in the year that hindered his ability to grip the bat. Not only was he not himself offensively, he also was lackluster when stacked up against baseball’s other second basemen.

Pedroia’s .098 Isolated Power (ISO), which measures a hitter’s raw power or the ability to hit for extra bases, ranked 13th among 17 qualified major league second basemen. The mark is considered “poor” to “awful,” according to FanGraphs’ estimate chart, and shows just how detrimental being banged up for the second consecutive season was to his overall pop.

The nine-year veteran posted career-lows across the board, hitting .278 with seven homers, 53 RBIs and a .712 OPS. His strikeout rate (12.3 percent) was the highest of his career. Shutting him down after 135 games — amazing he even played that many — didn’t just make sense. It also was the only sensible move for a team that shifted its focus to 2015 in the middle of July.

But as uninspiring as Pedroia’s 2014 season was from an offensive standpoint, it was equally as impressive defensively. He committed only two errors and led all big league second sackers with an 18.3 Ultimate Zone Rating (UZR), which FanGraphs describes as the number of runs above or below average a fielder is in both range runs, outfield arm runs, double play runs and error runs combined. A 15 UZR is considered “Gold Glove caliber,” according to FanGraphs.

Pedroia’s .997 fielding percentage led all major league second basemen. It was the best mark of his career — a career that already included three Gold Gloves — and trumped the marks posted by the Detroit Tigers’ Ian Kinsler (.988) and the Seattle Mariners’ Robinson Cano (.987), who were the other AL Gold Glove finalists. Cleveland Indians second baseman Jason Kipnis ranked second in the AL behind Pedroia with a .989 fielding percentage.

Clearly, Pedroia’s offensive woes didn’t impede his defensive prowess. Neither did the Red Sox’s year-long struggles, Stephen Drew and Xander Bogaerts flip-flopping as his double play partner, Boston’s roster constantly changing or a thumb injury that probably would have sent most players to the shelf for an extended period. Instead, Pedroia only became better defensively, seemingly realizing it was one area in which he still could thrive amid all of the other chaos.

Pedroia obviously would prefer a more complete campaign in 2015. So, too, would the Red Sox. But the 31-year-old’s ability to brush everything else aside to make an impact truly is a testament to his mindset, his importance to Boston and his uniqueness as an athlete.

Then again, Pedroia has long been a player worth emulating.