Dustin Pedroia's 'big day' at Red Sox workouts: the complete saga, from stretch to ice

FORT MYERS, Fla. – Dustin Pedroia must not read the papers, because he seemed genuinely surprised to learn Monday had been a big day for him. A little batting practice. A few groundballs. A handful of phantom turns at second base. It was a pretty typical morning workout for any other 13-year big league veteran, but for Pedroia, it was a day his manager had touted as a big day for his progress toward playing in a game again.

In fact, those were Alex Cora’s exact words over the weekend: Monday was a “big day” because the workload was going to increase, suggesting Pedroia’s spring debut might be right around the corner.

“It was?” Pedroia said. “Honestly, I didn’t even know he said that.”

Cora had previously played down Pedroia expectations, giving only vague answers about making steady progress after extensive knee surgery a year and a half ago. Pedroia was an active member of camp when it opened three weeks ago, but he was limited in drills, and didn’t do all of the side-to-side work with his teammates. Monday, Cora said, would be the day those restraints were lifted. Pedroia might be playing in a game before the weekend, he said.

It seemed monumental – relatively speaking, of course – but Pedroia shrugged.

“I feel just like I’m preparing for another season,” he said. “I feel normal. I don’t want to get too excited. I’m just sticking to the plan and trying to get better every day. That’s it.”

So, maybe it was a big day, or maybe it was just another day, but we exhaustively tracked every batting practice pitch and every fielding drill groundball just in case to find out what exactly a significant step for Pedroia looks like at this point in the spring. The answer? It actually did look like just another day. Which is, maybe, a good thing.

Team stretch

This is as boring as it gets, but a day has to start somewhere, and for the Red Sox it starts with stretch and conditioning. Reality is, Pedroia’s day started in the training room or somewhere else behind the scenes where he got himself ready, but we first saw him in action when he was out there for stretch with his teammates. While most of them jogged, Pedroia spent much of his time standing to the side, talking to a trainer. It was a good reminder that, while he’s ramping up to a relatively normal spring routine, Pedroia still has his own particulars to take care of.

As most of the big league regulars ran sprints in front of him, Pedroia put a rope around his waist and began jogging forward, lifting his knees up high, while the trainer pulled on him from behind. Then Pedroia did the same thing at a normal jog, still with the trainer acting like an anchor.

After just a few minutes, Pedroia grabbed his gear and began walking to the practice field.

Infield drills

Ever seen two guys play catch? Then you can easily enough picture Pedroia and Brock Holt getting loose in shallow left field. Nothing extreme. No great distance. No over-the-top effort. Just getting their arms and shoulders loose for four minutes. All of their teammates were doing the same except for Mookie Betts, who got loose by taking groundballs at shortstop.

When the throwing was finished, Pedroia jogged to second base. He was eventually joined there by young infielder Tzu-Wei Lin, but first he had a long conversation with coach Ramon Vazquez. While there were other coaches on the scene, it was Vazquez who hit every groundball and threw every batting practice pitch that involved Pedroia. An hour earlier in the clubhouse, Pedroia had been giving Vazquez a hard time about his rapid-fire delivery. No need for that many groundballs in such a short amount of time, no matter how quickly they all wanted to get out of there.

Perhaps because he’d been standing around for a while, Pedroia began hopping up and down and jogging in place before the drills officially began. The first set of drills were really for the pitchers, who practiced covering first base on groundballs to the right side.

Eight grounders were hit to Pedroia. He and Lin alternated taking balls hit to second base. When young reliever Josh Taylor dropped a perfectly good throw from Pedroia, the second baseman offered a ready excuse.

“New glove!” Pedroia said. “New glove. We’re all right.”

The fifth ball hit to Pedroia was a slow roller, and he had to charge and flip. He shouted, “I got it! I got it!” as he ran forward to make the play. Pedroia was 8-for-8 making the play with an accurate throw, and when the session was over, Rick Porcello walked off the field saying “thank you” to the coaches and “nice work boys” to the infielders.

Up next were the regular infield drills. This time, Pedroia took 10 groundballs with a pivot and throw to second base after each one. After that, eight more groundballs followed by a throw to first base. He would occasionally range pretty far to his left. No diving plays, but certainly not stationary, and he laughed after one short hop that was more low line drive than true groundball.

To finish the drills, Pedroia, Lin, Holt and Xander Bogaerts worked on feeds and double play turns. Pedroia fielded a ground ball and flipped to second three times, and he took the feed and turned the double play three times. All of it seemed to be second nature.

Batting practice

The cage had been rolled into place, Vazquez was ready behind the screen ready to pitch, and Pedroia was up first for batting practice when Carl Yastrzemski walked up and stood behind the cage. Pedroia put things on hold for just a moment so he could jog over and properly say hello.

Once in the cage, Pedroia bunted the first three pitches he saw, then he took six swings: groundball to right, groundball up the middle, deep fly ball off the left-field wall, line drive over the third baseman, sharp groundball up the middle, and a would-be double to left-center field. When Pedroia ran out of the box after that final swing, he nearly ran into the cage, which had been positioned a little too far forward. One batter later, it was pulled back.

Second round of batting practice was more of the same. Line drive to left, sure double off the wall, soft liner up the middle, another line drive to right-center field, a ball that one-hopped the wall in left, and a legitimate home run.

“That’s gone!” Pedroia said, as he finished his swing and ran to first base without cage interference this time.

Third round, another series of line drives to left field, a groundball to shortstop, a line drive to center, and another home run. This one, though, was to center field – slightly left of center – and Pedroia didn’t watch it. He was running out of the box as if it were a double – though not at full speed – and didn’t know he’d hit it out until Steve Pearce told him.

“Yeah, it was Pedey!” Pearce said.

“Hell,” said Pedroia. “I don’t need to run so hard if I’m going deep.”

Pedroia came back to the cage and sat on an overturned Rawlings ball bucket while he waited for his next turn. He asked again about the home run.

“Yeah it was,” Holt confirmed. “Between the batter’s eye and the Monster.” (This particular field had a chain-link replica of the Green Monster in left field.)

“I haven’t hit a home run to center field in batting practice in my life,” Pedroia said nearly two hours later. “I don’t know if someone got that on video. They might have been lying to me.”

They weren’t. Pedroia took two more rounds of batting practice, often talking to Yastrzemski and Bogaerts in between. In his fourth round, he hit three more line drives into the outfield and a sharp ball toward the shortstop position. He finished the round with a routine fly ball to fairly deep right-center field. He grunted a little after he hit it, well aware he didn’t get all of it.

In his fifth and final round, Pedroia hit two more balls off the fake Green Monster before finishing with another home run. Three of his five rounds ended with a homer. As his teammates finished their last rounds of batting practice and left the field, Pedroia stuck around to do a little bit of base running. For two batters, he stood at second base and practiced getting a good jump on contact. The second time, when he got to third base, Pedroia literally ducked into foul territory rather than round the base and head for home. He seemed to be imagining a line drive down the line by catcher Oscar Hernandez.

There was no line drive, Pedroia was fine, and with that, he grabbed his bat and walked off the field, through the grass and back into the Red Sox clubhouse at 10:19 a.m. He got some routine medical treatment and ice, but the hard work was done. It was a big day. Or it was just another day. It was a day that got Pedroia a little bit closer to playing in a game.

“Today was a great day,” he said. “But I’ve got to have another one tomorrow.”

For Pedroia, the biggest day is always the next one.

(Top photo of Pedroia: Christopher Evans / Boston Herald via Getty Images)