Dustin Pedroia: “It’s been a long time since I’ve been myself”

Red Sox second baseman Dustin Pedroia played through a wrist injury for most of the season before finally shutting things down and undergoing surgery in mid-September, finishing with career-lows in batting average (.278), on-base percentage (.337), and slugging percentage (.376).

During a radio interview Pedroia told WEEI in Boston that he’s “100 percent” recovered from the surgery to repair a tendon in his left wrist, adding:

Now that it’s fixed, it’s night and day. I can already tell that. There’s a lot of IOU’s to hand out to people, so I’m pretty excited about it. I feel great. I’m back to a hundred percent. I’m doing all my lifts and everything. My rehab’s going good. I’m full strength and I’m pretty excited. It’s been a long time since I’ve been myself. It’s going to be a lot of fun next year.

Pedroia has been banged up a lot in recent years and because of it the former MVP’s performance has varied wildly, with lots of unproductive stretches. He topped an .800 OPS each season from 2007 to 2011, but during the past four seasons his OPS has fallen from .861 to .797 to .787 to .712.

Pedroia, now 31 years old, has seven seasons and $97 million remaining on his contract.

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