MOOKIE ON COOPERSTOWN TRACK

It’s early, but it’s notable

Mookie Betts still has 21⁄2 seasons before he can become a free agent, and maybe another dozen years after that until he decides to call it a career. But his first five seasons have been so impressive, there are only a few current players who are logical comparisons. There are plenty of former players. Most of them are Hall of Famers. Last week, Betts took his 2,500th career plate appearance. While he continues to lead the majors in most offensive categories this season, it’s worth looking at his career as it pertains to the Hall of Fame. Not counting players like Billy Wagner and Adrian Beltre who only made brief stops in Boston, the Red Sox likely won’t see a former player enter the Hall of Fame until David Ortiz, who last played in 2016 and isn’t eligible until 2021. Given he has to beat the designated hitter stigma, it might take him a couple of years.

Curt Schilling was on 51.2 percent of the ballots last year, his sixth try of a possible 10. He doesn’t appear to have enough steam to make it to the needed 75 percent, though it’s getting close. Manny Ramirez was on just 22 percent in his second year of the ballot and almost certainly won’t make it. Jon Lester and Dustin Pedroia could make things interesting. Lester is just a four-time AllStar at age 34 with 163 wins and 2,089 strikeouts, a ways away from the 300-win total that no longer seems viable and far from the 3,000-strikeout total many voters look for. But he’s an October hero with three World Series titles to his name. If he plays five more years at a competitive level, he’ll give voters something to think about. Pedroia compared his recent knee surgery to getting new tread on his tire, and that could be enough to give the 34-year-old the final push. His .300 average and .807 OPS are on par with the last three second basemen to enter the Hall of Fame: Craig Biggio, Roberto Alomar and Ryne Sandberg. But he entered the weekend with 1,802 hits, well shy of Biggio’s 3,060 and Alomar’s 2,704. Sandberg had fewer than 2,400, but had a 10-year run of dominance — including one 40-homer season — that separates him from the other three.

Bottom line: If Pedroia keeps playing well into his late 30s, he should get a plaque.

Betts could be next, but before getting too excited, it’s worth taking a look back at Nomar Garciaparra.

Garciaparra had an even better start to his career. Through his first five seasons, the once-beloved shortstop had two batting titles and was hitting .333 with a .956 OPS. Injuries derailed his career, to the point he was a part-time player before turning 34. After just two years on the ballot, Garciaparra’s name disappeared when he got just 1.8 percent of the votes.

Betts entered the weekend hitting .297 for his career with a .359 on-base and .868 OPS. His fifth season should net his third AllStar spot and a third top-six MVP finish, perhaps even winning the award — something Garciaparra never did.

To understand Betts’ dominance, the four categories that sum up his skillset are average, OPS, homers and stolen bases. Only five other players match his .297 average, .868 OPS, 90 homers and 90 stolen bases through their first five major-league seasons: Mike Trout, Ryan Braun, Hanley Ramirez, David Wright and Alex Rodriguez.

Trout is on a Hall of Fame path. Ramirez and Wright fell victim to injuries, and Rodriguez and Braun will have a heck of a battle to get in the Hall of Fame because of their admitted use of performancing enhancing drugs.

And Betts still has more than two-thirds of his fifth season remaining to add to his totals.

What if you eliminate the stolen bases and just look at Betts, the pure hitter? Since 1940, there are 35 other players who began at least as well by average, OPS and homers. Eleven are still playing, three are too recently retired to be Halleligible, and four are either on the ballot or debuting next season. Of the other 17, a remarkable 13 are in the Hall of Fame.

Betts has the pure hitting ability, plus the bonuses of being a great baserunner and elite fielder at his position.

Nothing is a sure thing when it comes to the Hall, but Betts has positioned himself nicely. He’s only getting better. And he clearly has a chance to be one of the best ever.

Book corner

Holidays are all about nostalgia, which makes Evan Drellich’s new book, “The Big 50: The Men and Moments that Made the Boston Red Sox” the perfect Father’s Day gift for a Red Sox fan.

Good luck putting this one down. Nostalgia jumps off the page.

With 50 short chapters dedicated to the most important people and moments in Red Sox history, Drellich, a former Herald baseball writer who now writes for NBC Sports Boston, goes back in time and advances each story with new thoughts, quotes and tales.

There are original interviews throughout, including a wellwritten foreword by

Kevin Youkilis and a conversation with a very reflective Theo Epstein.

It’s easy to envision Epstein throwing his feet up on a desk as he explains how “the biggest difference between the Red Sox experience and Cubs experience is much better perspective.”

He won a World Series with the Red Sox at just 30 years old. And at that age, “I think it’s impossible to see the job from all sides and understand the impact you have on others, both positively and negatively. And that’s a big thing in our society today. You can cover a lot of current events right now just by saying, ‘Hey, the world would be a better place if people better understood their impact on others and/ or the impact they can have on others, positively and negatively.’ ”

Epstein owes a lot to Larry Lucchino, who brought the former Orioles intern with him to the San Diego Padres, and then to the Red Sox. But if Theo could do it all over again, he would make some different decisions regarding his infamous walkout in 2005.

“The people who know how baseball decisions were made and how we built a baseball operations department ... and shaped its impact on the organization were the ones pulling all-nighters in the offices of Fenway Park in the baseball operations basement,” Epstein said. “That’s my reality. And I also felt like I had a lot of autonomy, like it was never a power struggle at all. Whatever differences we had were sort of differences in like, values and organizational: What we stand for as an organization, how we handle things like credit and blame, and whether we’d operate with humility, whether we cared about optics and things of that nature.

“And so I would have handled it have much, much differently now than I did then. I made a huge mistake by failing to realize I could have simply just kept showing up to work. I didn’t need to walk away. I didn’t need to walk away to fix those things. I could have just said, ‘Well, I’m just going to keep showing up to work because I don’t want this to be a big story. I don’t want this to be a big deal and I don’t really wanna leave.’ But at the time, in all my absolutism and sort of youthful extremism, I saw it as black and white, but really there were so many shades of gray involved.” . . .

Terry Francona’s .558 regularseason winning percentage with the Cleveland Indians (through Thursday) doesn’t match his .574 winning percentage in Boston, and the Red Sox did OK without him in 2013. But to this day, the story of his split with the Sox remains a murky one.

It was officially announced as a mutual decision after the 2011 season, though it’s been debated in various media outlets and books since then. In Drellich’s book, Red Sox chairman Tom Werner seemed to indicate it was ownership’s decision.

“He probably felt like he was surprised that we didn’t extend his contract,” Werner said. “But we felt that it was time for a change. That’s part of baseball. And I don’t think that he was very happy that we decided to move in a different direction, but we felt that that was the right thing for the club and part of baseball.”

Mugging ’em up

Just as the Red Sox become a home run hitting team again, MLB is going to change their baseballs. The league had an announcement this week: Don’t blame juiced baseballs for all these home runs, but changes are coming.

Commissioner Rob Manfred put together a committee of independent scientists and mathematicians, including Peko Hosoi, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT, to study the increased home run rate since 2015. (Home runs are actually down this year from last, 2.25 per game through Thursday versus 2.43, but totals were below two/game as recently as 2014.)

Manfred’s study concluded that “no change to the materials or manufacturing process, whether intentional or unintentional, has played a significant role in the home run surge.”

Instead, the study said the surge was at least in part due “to a change in the aerodynamic properties of the baseball (i.e., reduced drag for given launch conditions, as opposed to a change in launch conditions).”

The baseballs will now be monitored to take account of the temperature and humidity of each storage location in all 30 ballparks. There may be humidors required to keep the baseballs in a consistent state before use.

The balls will also be changed. Rawlings will work with MLB to make updates in their production of the balls and “develop additional specifications for the aerodynamic properties of the ball.”

There will be a new set of aerodynamic tests for game baseballs, and new guidelines on the appropriate mud rubbing that each club is allowed. Umpires will be in charge of enforcement.