It didn’t take long for Steve Pearce to go from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows.
Pearce re-signed with the Red Sox on a one-year, $6.25 million contract last offseason after earning World Series MVP honors in Boston’s championship triumph over the Los Angeles Dodgers. His 2019 season never got off the ground, though, as he battled injuries beginning in spring training and ultimately totaled just 99 plate appearances over 29 regular season games thanks to various ailments.
Now, Pearce, who turns 37 next April, must decide whether to seek a new deal in free agency. Or he could consider retiring after a 13-year career in which he played for seven different organizations. A number of factors must be weighed.
“I’m just going to sit at home and I’m watching football. That’s my plan,” Pearce recently told WEEI’s Rob Bradford on the “Bradfo Sho” podcast. “I’m going to decompress. It was a long year. I only had 100 at-bats, so it wasn’t that bad, but I hit .180 and rehabbed the whole entire year and struggled to find my swing. It has been a really long year, so I would hate to make my decision right now based on the year I just had with baseball still being so close. I need to step away from the game a little bit and sit down with my family and make a decision.”
Pearce hit just .180 (16-for-89) with one home run and nine RBIs this season after a productive 2018 campaign in which he hit .284 with 11 homers, 42 RBIs and an .890 OPS in 251 plate appearances split between the Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays. He last appeared in a major league game on May 31.
