Dustin Pedroia's absence could be a blessing in disguise, with Kinsler at second base.
Although they both broke into the league in 2006, Pedroia took a little while to become a regular player, and has fought more injuries than Kinsler, so the new acquisition has played about 260 more games than 'Pedey'. Although that is a factor, he still leads Pedroia in pretty much every major statistics category, and some by quite a bit. He has almost 250 career home runs compared to Pedroia's 140, and 1198 runs batted in compared to 921 for the guy who has played three games in 2018. Among active players he's seventh in runs scored, and is a huge threat on the base paths, having two 30 steal seasons, and three 20 steal seasons. It's also not like Pedroia has a huge edge in defense either, as Kinsler was a Gold Glove winner at second base in 2016, and again nominated in 2017.
It's hard to argue that Kinsler has always been a better second baseman than Pedroia, who won the 2007 AL Rookie of the year, and then the 2008 AL MVP. In 2011, he had his first twenty home run season, along with his first 90 RBI season, while still batting over .300. His team first position altered a bit in 2017 also when, after taking a dirty slide from Manny Machado at second base, Matt Barnes (although he said it was unintentional) threw at Machado's head. Yes, this was the wrong thing to do, but Pedroia then went on to say that "that was not him, that's them", stick with your team man.
Overall, I'm not saying that Kinsler is Jose Altuve, but he is upgrade of Eduardo Nuñez, and will be a factor in the Red Sox's playoff run.
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