2013 Red Sox Community Projections: Dustin Pedroia injured, but undeterred

Dustin Pedroia has a ready-made excuse: a torn thumb ligament that he suffered right out of the gates back in April. A disappointing season would have been easy enough to forgive, particularly for Boston's star player.

But Pedroia doesn't need that excuse. The Red Sox won the World Series. Pedroia played in 160 games en route to that victory, compiling 5.4 fWAR and 6.5 rWAR. The numbers below will show that he was not everything we had imagined--there's no denying that the power simply wasn't there this year. But power has always been no more than the cherry on top with Pedroia. Even without it, he was one of the best players on a very good team.

And now that he's locked in for pretty much his whole career, we can look forward to year after year of that being true.

The lack of power clearly shows up. The closest guess on slugging was theartolater at .435, a full 20 points above his true figure with only Theredlaydown coming in below that all the way down at .370. But conversely almost everyone was way off on plate appearances, too. And in a year where Pedroia was never truly healthy, it's amazing that the error was in underestimating how much he would play.

For "winners," we have Colco, the only one to have both a perfect guess and near miss, and MaineSox, who topped the tables with three near misses. Your reward is the respect of your peers.

Actually, I can't promise that.

Sorry.

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