Hours before today's arbitration hearing, the Red Sox and designated hitter David Ortiz settled at the midpoint for $14.575MM, tweets ESPN's Buster Olney. The new contract represents the largest-ever average annual value for a DH, notes WEEI's Rob Bradford. Had Ortiz and the Red Sox reached a hearing, a panel of three arbitrators would have chosen between Boston's $12.65MM submission and Ortiz's $16.5MM salary figure for 2012. Ortiz is represented by Fern Cuza of SFX.
Potentially inhibited by the cost of a draft pick, Ortiz accepted an arbitration offer from the Red Sox in December, and it took the looming threat of a hearing to force a settlement. I favored the Red Sox in a potential hearing, but they preferred not to risk a situation many regard as a crapshoot. As a bonus, they were able to avoid Ortiz having a front-row seat for their attempt to prove he's worth less than the midpoint.
Six potential arbitration hearings remain, as our tracker shows: Alexi Casilla (Twins), Casey Janssen (Blue Jays), Adam Jones (Orioles), Garrett Jones (Pirates), Casey McGehee (Pirates), and Jose Veras (Brewers).
So who blinked on this? Big Papi didn’t want his dirty laundry aired, and Cherington didn’t want to have to walk away from a $16.5m award. Win-win, Red Sox Nation.
Don’t get me wrong, I love Papi, but I’d rather see them have a reasonably priced DH and a stronger rotation instead of the current situation.
What pitching that is out there would you have them get? Oswalt? He clearly has shown a reluctance to come here and there is nothing else out there.
just curious, does a team get punished by having to forfeit a pick or something if they walk away from the award?
Wow, talk about overpaying for a DH
The Sox have a nasty habit of offering arbitration to just about anyone it seems, not named Drew. They offered it even once to Tony Graffanino for the odd chance he would get an offer, then got stuck with him as well when he accepted.
I’m okay with this. Is anyone else just pumped for this season to get under way or is it just me? Being a Sox fan I want to see what they’re going to bring this year.
If there is anyone who isn’t pumped up for the season to get under way, then they aren’t real baseball fans.
Blah blah selfish blah blah team loyalty blah blah steroids
I said it all along they would settle at around the $14MM mark at the 11th hour.
you really stuck your neck out on that one
Not really, just used some common sense.
I hope your sarcasm detector is still under warranty
Want a medal?
That would be nice.
Seems MLBTR doesn’t approve pictures anymore, but if they did, I’d send you a cookie 🙂
I agree, although the question is why did it take so long? Settling at the mid-point is generally the way these things go, so I wonder which side wasn’t open to the mid-point until the 11th hour? I was actually hoping this one went to arbitration just to see what happened. My guess is Ortiz would have won since the Red Sox were only offering a little more than a 100K raise.
Blah, I guess I’ll have to eat my words, I thought Ortiz would want to go to the hearing since the Sox barely offered above last years salary.
Believe it or not, this is a big win for the Sox. Ortiz wouldn’t settle with the team prior to today because he was requiring a two-year contract in order to settle. Instead, the Sox get him at one year, non-guaranteed. There is the slight possibility of releasing him in spring training if we don’t like how he is working out.
Payroll-wise, this puts us at $178.9MM on 26 MLB contracts and 14 MILB/Mixed contracts (including benefits and admin. costs that are countable). That leaves about $10MM available in the budget (according to Lucchino’s projection of $189MM) to make additions now, or prior to the trade deadline. But it most importantly does not tie us down for the 2013 season, where the organization clearly hopes to be under the CBT payroll line, so as to get the tax rate reset and get in on the revenue sharing kickback under the new CBA.
To me, writing this team off is absurd. Lackey’s ERA+ last year was the 20th worst since 1901. It’s almost impossible to find anyone who wouldn’t improve on that. To give you an idea of just *how bad* he was, Andrew Miller – had he started the whole season – would have been worth a win and a half more than Lackey. So the trash at the back of the pen will have to strive to suck that hard to be a downgrade. With Dice-K slated back in July, they only really need to get us until then.
If Bard is below average, he’ll be an upgrade over the misc. jaberwocky of pitchers they had in the #4 spot. Yes, pitching might be a concern, especially if there’s injury – but the two points with that are that 1.) any team that suffers pitching injuries is going to have issues and 2.) there’s still the trade deadline.
Fact of the matter is that the Red Sox stood to gain MORE WINS from their lineup this year than anything they could have realistically done in the rotation. A BELOW AVERAGE Carl Crawford is worth two more wins. A healthy Youkilis is another 1-2 wins. If Ross and Sweeney can combine for below average/average production in right – THAT’S another 2 wins. Their health likely mitigates any loss of Scutaro. They could seriously gain 6-7 wins by just being in better shape and not being injured constantly. They’ve replaced most to all of their production in the bullpen and improved their rotation. They’re a better team then they were last year, they – like everyone else – needs to stay focused and healthy.
agreed, i think they are still a good team and you can’t count them out and base next season what happend in the past
This is about the price I thought Ortiz would be around.
Well he is the best and only true DH in baseball, so there is no downside
Not to throw a monkey-wrench in here, because I think Ortiz is clearly the best DH out there (unless you count either Prince or Cabrera when they have to start sharing IB and DH), but in terms of money, you could have bought somewhat lesser performance for a lot less money. You have positional players like Damon (who can at least play the field, albeit not well, and run) and you have power hitters like Thome (who signed for $1.25 MM). If money is of lesser importance, than Ortiz is obviously a better option.
Papi is a big fat waste of money
If Ortiz was the one who wanted to settle then this shows you what happens when you don’t go to school.
If the agent told Ortiz to settle, Ortiz should get a new one because this agent may be as bad as Hank and Hal Steinbrenner and Randy Levine in negotiations.
It is clear Ortiz will not be back to the Red Sox next year unless he takes a major paycut. Why would you take less money when you had the arbitration case already won and all you had to do was show up?