Dustin Pedroia undergoes knee surgery, will miss at least seven months

The Red Sox have already suffered one blow early in the offseason when Eduardo Rodriguez underwent knee surgery that will likely cause him to miss the beginning of the 2018 season. Now, they are the victims of another knee surgery. This time, it is Dustin Pedroia undergoing the procedure. The veteran infielder went under the knife on Wednesday.

We don’t have exact specifics on the surgery right now, but word at the moment is that he will be kept out of action for at least seven months. That means, by the best case scenario, he could be back by May. Of course, with a surgery that is presumably as major as this one, there is a very real possibility of setbacks and it could be more realistic to expect him back for June at the earliest.

This knee injury is something that has been bothering Pedroia for much of 2017 and put him on the disabled list a couple times through the year. In fact, at one point Dave Dombrowski acknowledged how serious it is when he stated that it was something both Pedroia and the team would need to monitor for the rest of his career. That, clearly, is not great. It wasn’t always clear that he would undergo the surgery at all this winter, but based on all of the talk around the injury it seems to make sense that they’d get it done now and hope that it eases some of the difficulties moving forward.

As for how this affects the team, clearly it has the potential for a massive impact. We’ll touch on what this could mean for offseason plans tomorrow, but more generally this hurts both the offense and the defense. Pedroia wasn’t a stud at the plate this year, but he is still a top-of-the-lineup fixture who can get on base and start rallies. The defense will be the most affected, though, as Pedroia is one of the best defensive second basemen in the game. With potential question marks all around the rest of the infield, losing his glove is a huge blow. We’ll keep you posted if there are new developments in this story.