I was looking at Pedroia and with his low K% and ability to get an xBABIP of .322 he should continue with a average above .300. Also this year he is leading the league in hits at 24 years old. I thought I would compare him to Pete Rose (4256) and Craig Biggio (3060) at age 24 and see his chances of getting to 3000 or even 4000 hits. It is also noted that all of these players put in a majority of games at 2B (or close to majority).
First lets compare skills of the players in making contact and getting hits. In 1965 at 24 years of age Pete Rose had a BB%/KK% of 9.3%/11.3% and Craig Biggio was 8.7%/14.2%. Pedroia is better than both at the K% with 6.4%/8.5%. So he walks less but in his AB's he hits almost 3% more than Rose. As for career totals Rose ended at 10%/8.1%, so similar to where Pedroia is now.
Lets look now at hit totals at the same ages. Rose: 518 Biggio: 297 Pedroia: 400(with projection for rest of 2008). This puts him right in between these two. With these similarities I could see Pedroia continuing to total 170-220 hits for each year. Rose played until he was 45 and Biggio until he was 41. Playing until he is 40+ and staying largely healthy will be requirements to reach these numbers.
Pedroia is obviously off to a great start and is surrounded by great talent in Boston. He seems to fall between these 2 at this point which would put him above 3000, but probably not on pace for 4000+ at this point. If he came in with a low average of 165 Hits/Year he would have 3200+ at 41 years of age. I think he can top 165/year, which leaves injury as the limiting factor. He played the last month of 2007 and the playoffs with a broken bone in his hand. I think we can expect only a serious injury would limit his playing time.
Is there any other players on early pace for milestones we should look at?
Also check out my review of pitcher who have potential for 300 strikeouts.
First lets compare skills of the players in making contact and getting hits. In 1965 at 24 years of age Pete Rose had a BB%/KK% of 9.3%/11.3% and Craig Biggio was 8.7%/14.2%. Pedroia is better than both at the K% with 6.4%/8.5%. So he walks less but in his AB's he hits almost 3% more than Rose. As for career totals Rose ended at 10%/8.1%, so similar to where Pedroia is now.
Lets look now at hit totals at the same ages. Rose: 518 Biggio: 297 Pedroia: 400(with projection for rest of 2008). This puts him right in between these two. With these similarities I could see Pedroia continuing to total 170-220 hits for each year. Rose played until he was 45 and Biggio until he was 41. Playing until he is 40+ and staying largely healthy will be requirements to reach these numbers.
Pedroia is obviously off to a great start and is surrounded by great talent in Boston. He seems to fall between these 2 at this point which would put him above 3000, but probably not on pace for 4000+ at this point. If he came in with a low average of 165 Hits/Year he would have 3200+ at 41 years of age. I think he can top 165/year, which leaves injury as the limiting factor. He played the last month of 2007 and the playoffs with a broken bone in his hand. I think we can expect only a serious injury would limit his playing time.
Is there any other players on early pace for milestones we should look at?
Also check out my review of pitcher who have potential for 300 strikeouts.
2 comments:
Pete Rose hung on for five years after he was a "starter". Today he would have been out of the game. During those five years he had more than 500 hits, and never hit 300 (except in one year he had only 96 ABs). Rose is a poser!
He followed an age progression with an increasing walk rate, but I wouldn't say he couldn't play. His BABIP was down those years and his power was gone, but he still made good contact. As a Red Sox and Pedroia fan I would like to see him break the hit record.
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