All Pedroia, all the time?

Second baseman wants to play all 162 games

Dustin Pedroia is hard on J.D. Drew's heels during a base-running drill yesterday. (Jim Davis/Globe Staff)

FORT MYERS, Fla. - The question was an easy setup, as Terry Francona came over to show a new energy drink to his favorite target, Dustin Pedroia, yesterday morning. The manager was asked whether the second baseman might get a chance to play 162 this season.

"One hundred sixty-two what?" Francona quipped. "Cribbage games?"

Francona's joking aside, Pedroia expressed a desire to play every day this season. Apparently, he's not quite sure what to do to top winning an MVP trophy. But playing every game would be new to him, at least.

"That's part of being consistent," Pedroia said. "If you're out there every day trying to help your team win, that's a big part of what I'm trying to do. [That's] be consistent every day and help this team win games. If I could be out there every day doing that, it's a plus."

It could be a minus.

"I don't know that that's a goal of mine," Francona said. "Sometimes guys need a blow. There's times when they get beat up. I think he's already proved he's going to be out there a lot. There's days because of the way he plays, he'll take a dive in the hole and land on that shoulder. I think I need to be smart enough to every once in a while pull the plug on him, give him a day to bounce back.

"But I wouldn't sit a guy just for the sake of sitting him, either. If it makes sense, you do it. That's quite an accomplishment, but again, we usually try to look ahead and give guys a day they point to, the guys that are playing every day, just because we think it helps."

Francona has never been a fan of keeping players in the lineup every day. He knows players look forward to that scheduled day off, time to rejuvenate for the next stretch of games.

Pedroia acknowledged that it's "extremely hard, obviously," to play all 162 games, which is why few players do it. And it's especially difficult for a guy who tends to play with his intensity and all-out effort.

It might slightly curb the trash talk of his manager, since there would be no reason for Pedroia to (playfully) bash Francona for leaving him out of the lineup, as the manager did just five times in 2008. But as Pedroia recalled the first game he missed last season, it seemed clear he understood the reason he might not achieve his goal.

"I remember that game," Pedroia said of an early May game in Baltimore. "I was banged up at the time. Tito was like, 'This is a good time.' It was one of those times I needed it. I wasn't really helping us like I could be. There's always those times in the year where you need one. Tito's real good about it. He usually knows more than I do 'cause I'm not going to say I need one. It makes it difficult."

Pedroia is no different than he was last season. He's still likely to hold grudges forever if he's slighted, and to take just as much abuse from his teammates as ever.

Like the time Francona introduced him to Ken Macha, now the manager of the Brewers, and a good friend of Francona's.

"Macha was just making conversation. He said, 'Hey, you know, you remind me of Chad Curtis,' " Francona recalled. "He meant it really as a compliment. Pedey is like, 'Are you kidding me?' Maybe he's right. It went from something where I was just introducing a friend to I had to hold Pedey back.

"I'm not going to introduce him to anybody."

For the record, Curtis was a career .264 hitter in 10 seasons.

Pedroia doesn't usually like to make things simple. He'd rather use slights to motivate himself. He's got plenty of motivation to begin with. Pedroia spent the winter working out with Jacoby Ellsbury at the Athletes' Performance Institute in Arizona, doing more running and more conditioning, six days a week, four more than the previous offseason.

"It makes me healthy, my body feel good throughout the whole year," said Pedroia, who lost 11 pounds after getting food poisoning while on vacation in Mexico in November. "I want to play every game and make sure I'm not tired throughout the year. If you [work] your body the right way, you can do that. It's a long season. You take care of your body, you can play them all."

Amalie Benjamin can be reached at abenjamin@globe.com.