Dustin Pedroia was a limited on-field participant in 2018, but both he and the Boston Red Sox are hoping that won’t be the case again in 2019.
After undergoing cartilage restoration surgery in October 2017, Pedroia rehabbed into the 2018 season before making his debut in late May. He ultimately missed the rest of the season when inflammation flared back up after just three games.
Steven Wright, who had a similar procedure at the same time as Pedroia, also dealt with periodic inflammation and underwent another surgery earlier this offseason as a result. But on a conference call Monday, Red Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski noted that wouldn’t be the case for Pedroia while laying out the offseason plan for the second baseman.
“He is not going to have surgery,” Dombrowski said, via WEEI.com. “He has continued rehab and therapy. And that’s what he is going to continue to do. He will do that through about the middle of December. And start then some additional, then get back into exercising, more physical activities other than the therapy at that point. And then around the middle, sometime in January, beginning of January, middle of January, start running at that point. So we’re hopeful he’ll be ready for the season.”
Because of the nature of the surgery and the fact that Pedroia is 35 years old, the Red Sox would be wise to have some reinforcements ready. Similarly to last season, Dombrowski cited the slew of internal options the Red Sox have at their disposal.
“The reality is if you look at our club, there’s not a lot of holes there from a positional player perspective,” he said. “We’re hopeful that Dustin will be fine. I think if we’re going to look to protect ourselves, of course we have Brock (Holt), we’ve got Tzu-Wei Lin, we’ve got Eduardo Nunez, I would think that those people would be more of a tendency to have to be a non-roster invitee at this time for the simple fact that we just don’t have any positions to really promise anyone at this time because we’re hopeful that Dustin will be ready.”
