Dustin Pedroia signed to long term deal: Why such a signing is risky business in pro sports

Dustin Pedroia MIGHT be in the hall of fame someday. He MIGHT lead the Red Sox to another World Series win. Dustin Pedroia is a young devoted guy who will be in baseball for a long time. Dustin Pedroia is a young guy who, when David Ortiz leaves in a few years, MIGHT be the face of the franchise for the Boston Red Sox.

Patrice Bergeron MIGHT be in the hall of fame someday. He MIGHT lead the Bruins to another Stanley Cup win. Patrice Bergeron is one of the most devoted players in the NHL and will be in hockey for a long time. Patrice Bergeron is a pretty young guy who, when Zedeno Chara leaves in a few years, MIGHT be the face of the franchise for the Boston Bruins.

Dustin Pedroia and Patrice Bergeron the Red Sox and Bruins 2 players, 2 teams, and 2 different sports, 2 fan base and 2 different Hall of Fames where each athlete will be making a case to join someday.

Those 2 men: Patrice Bergeron and Dustin Pedroia are 2 of the best in their businesses, and 2 men who are crucial to their team’s success. But nevertheless, as profiled in the first 2 paragraphs of this post, those 2 men are 2 different players who, even with all that sits upon their resumes, still pose a lot of IFs and MIGHTs for their respective teams, thus drawing up one final commonality between those 2 guys.

Perhaps the biggest fact of these two players careers that does not include the words IF or MIGHT are deals signed each mere days apart from one another.

Patrice Bergeron will be a Bruin for the rest of his career and Dustin Pedroia will be a Red Sox for the rest of his career.

“This is my home and it’s the only thing I've ever known”~Dustin Pedrioa

On July 12th, Patrice Bergeron was signed to an 8 year, 52 million dollar contract that will hold him in Boston through the 2021 NHL season.

On July 22nd, Dustin Pedroia was signed to a 7 year 100 million dollar contract that will keep him in Boston through the 2021 MLB season.

Nevertheless on this 23^rd day in July, its Pedroia making headlines.

After being drafted 65th overall back in 2004, Pedroia was originally playing ball as a shortstop: a style that still remains evident even 7 years after making the switch to 2nd base. Nevertheless, 7 years after he made his debut back in 2006 Pedroia's commitment has never come under question. He has played 956 career games, and is still yet to miss a single match-up this season. He has committed just 38 career errors (that is 15 less than Mr Perfect Kevin Youkilis himself.) and is one of the greatest in recent history at turning the double play. But even with all that, does Dustin Pedroia deserve over 14 million dollars a year from 2014-2021?

Pedroia averages almost 150 hits a season, over 30 doubles a year and just under 15 homers each season. But still does he deserve all this money? 

Dustin Pedroia is now just 34 RBI’s short 500 and has a career batting average of .303. He turns 30 in just a few weeks yet his OBP and slugging percentage remain seated at .385 and .422 respectively. But still dose he deserve 100 million dollars?

NO!

Fact is, in the world of pro sports, well, nobody deserves any of the big name contracts that get handed out time and time again.

In Baseball: Albert Pujols, fresh off his second career World Series win, Pujols became a free agent during the 2011 offseason all before he was handed a historic 254 million dollar, 10 year contract with the LA Angles.  

In the immediate wake of that huge contract, the Angles immediately fell under question as sure enough his batting average immediately dropped off as he went from hitting .299 with St Louis to hammering .249 just 2 season later in this 2013 campaign.

Then in football: we all remember the fun we had with Chad Ochocinco. After averaging over 1,000 yards a season in Cinicnatti, Ochocinco came to the Pats a team with one of the best Quarterbacks in history throwing to him (Tom Brady) , and one of the best coaches in history (Bill Belicheck) barking at him from the sidelines and still he dropped off going from catching 67 balls the year before to snagging just 15 with New England.

So alright, with those to examples the case can be made that while these athletes DID drop off at older ages, yes they also changed teams which can shake a guy up.

But nevertheless, even looking at contract extensions alone, the drop-offs and underperformances are still there.

Rick Dipetro for the Islanders, Tyler Seguin for the Bruins, Aaron Hernandez, even Rob Gronkowski. All guys who either got injured, just stopped preforming, or, in the case of Hernandez got arrested, and all guys who, when they began to struggle, got hurt or ended up behind bars, left their team’s fighting pathetically to dump their contracts.  

So, with all this against them, why do pro sports teams continue to hand out these high risk contracts and extensions? One word --- sentiment and leadership.

Even with the word loyalty basically torn out of a player’s dictionary, it is still widely prevalent in the vocabularies of a team’s ownership and fans. With fans literally serving as the heart and soul of a team’s revenue, while players don’t really care, guys like Peter Charelli and Ben Cherrington do not want to tick off their fans.  

So, in attempt to satisfy us moody fans, these guys send millions and millions of dollars in the direction of guys like Pedroia and Bergeron for what?

So that us fans don’t have to feel torn when we were our Kevin Youkilis Red Sox jersey while in NY his name is emblazoned on the back of one running with pinstripes?

No matter how good he is, no matter how many punctured lungs he plays through, no matter how many times he dives into the dirt to block a ground ball, what if? What if one day Pedroia goes down and wrecks his knee? What if, the next time Matt Cooke takes a run at a Bruin it is Bergeron on the other end and he succumbed to the same fate that has now befallen Marc Savard?

Then what?