On this date in 2003, the Red Sox made one of the best free-agent signings of all time. The story of David Ortiz’s Red Sox career is well-known and often recounted, however. So let’s fast-forward to this date eight years ago when the Red Sox added another pretty good first baseman/designated hitter: Mike Napoli put pen to paper and officially signed a one-year deal worth $5MM guaranteed. The deal was notable because the two sides had previously agreed to a three-year, $39MM contract that fell apart because of concern over the health of Napoli’s hip.
After the failed physical, Napoli briefly flirted with a return to the Texas Rangers, with whom he’d spent the previous two seasons. Napoli had been a significant trade acquisition for the Rangers following the 2010 season, making his one and only All-Star team while helping Texas repeat as American League champions. Though Texas would fall for the second consecutive season in the World Series, Napoli played lights out, slashing .350/.464/.700 in 28 plate appearances with two home runs and 10 runs driven in.
Regardless, the Red Sox had more playing time to offer the former catcher, and he became Boston’s new first basemen with a deal guaranteeing $5MM while still providing a ceiling of $13MM based on incentives. The 31-year-old would take home the full boat, cashing in with 139 games played, 578 plate appearances, and 3.7 rWAR by way of a .259/.360/.482 batting line. He chipped in 23 home runs despite a 32.4 percent strikeout rate.
Napoli was absolutely a contributing factor in the Red Sox turning around a 93-loss team from the season prior, becoming a 97-win juggernaut that rolled past the Rays, Tigers, and Cardinals to win the World Series title. Though Napoli would play in the World Series three times, 2013 was the only time he’d walk away with a ring.
Ultimately, though the hip issue got Napoli’s Boston tenure off to an inauspicious start, the relationship was an unmitigated success, so much so that Napoli re-upped following that 2013 campaign for another two seasons at a $16MM AAV. Ultimately, Napoli earned $45MM over that three-year stretch, well more than the $39MM he would have earned under the original terms of his deal.
These days, Napoli is a Quality Assurance Coach on the staff of one of his former teammates from that 2013 team, David Ross.
Really hard up for something to write about during the work stoppage.
Hey, knuck2, I’ll tell you how it was growing up with Harmon Killebrew over in Payette County, Idaho, 1949-54.
No statistics, though. Don’t know if the Payette Valley Sentinel even reported stats. It was owned by another Killebrew, too, Harmon’s uncle.
Things were different then. We weren’t online. Weren’t even off-line.
People didn’t talk baseball much, so every idiot didn’t get to show off his smarts.
Can’t remember our batting averages. Harmon’s cousin Jack Mordhorst had the best BA in ’54.
I threw Jack a lot of BP to keep him sharp.
No big games to report.
Anyway it was all over by late May and the next time I saw Harmon we were bucking onions over near Nyssa.
Then I joined the Navy and Harmon got discovered and ended up in The Show.
End of story.
I wouldn’t say paying $13 million for a single year of an OPS below .850, 23 home runs and a 32.4% strikeout rate from a 1st baseman is “one of the best free-agent signings of all time.” It’s a pretty good signing… I guess. A lot of first baseman have an OPS above that, strike out a lot less and hit more than twice as many home runs. I’m not sure why TC Zencka would ever call this “one of the best free agent signings of all time.” Is it just me or is TC Zencka the only MLBTR writer who would ever say something like that about a one year deal for Mike Napoli?
…All time?
Please check your reading comprehension. He was referring to David Ortiz.
It’s pretty obviously referring to the David Ortiz signing on the same day, many years apart.
He never said which account.
Is it true they called him Killebrew because he could drink a beer faster than anyone on the planet?
That was lousy Fever.
LOL … tough crowd!
When I first started watching baseball, Mays and Aaron were the best but in addition to my idol Yaz, I always wanted to see Frank Howard, Dick Allen an Killebrew bat because when they connected, the ball was crushed.
Oh, and Jack reminded me that he played for the old Boise Pilots for a while. Honor where honor is due, I say.
He later went on to become an irrascible old curmudgeon and he is alive and well in Marsing, Idaho, even now.
Hey, Catch, is that better now?
Well @fred – I for one enjoyed it, thank you. “Irascible old curmudgeon” is one of many remaining aims….
LondonUK. Oh, my. That means we are known worldwide. Almost.
I pray for peace, even as I am typing this reply.
If you are US Military, I thank you for your service.
Even if not, I thank you. Your words have greatly brightened my day. And you caught my misspelling. Good catch.
May your aims be attained, every one.
Lolz
Like newscaster Paul Harvey used to say, “page 2. The rest of the story.”
Seeing this was sort of a Red Sox story is what caused me to tell about Harmon Killebrew.
You see, Harmon was scouted by the Red Sox and by the old Washington Senators.
Harmon would have signed with anybody I do believe. None of us liked working in the fields, and Harmon turned down a college baseball scholarship. I don’t blame him.
But the kicker was, the only one making Harmon a good offer was the Senators. Boston just pulled the wrong lever there, you might say. snicker snicker
So Harmon went to Washington, then Minnesota when the team changed names, and just hit a jillion homers and was a shoo-in for the HOF.
And not as a Red Sox.
ha ha ha ha. Any bad thing happening to Boston was a real thrill for me.
Loved him with the Tribe. Always a “Party at Napoli’s.”
There’s four things I’ll always think of Napoli for …
1) Hopping behind a bar to serve drinks
2) Starting the beard trend throughout the country
3) Walking down the streets of Boston shirtless with a cigarette dangling from his mouth
And #4?
No. 4 can be the home run Napoli hit off Verlander in game 3 of the 2013 ALCS to give the Red Sox a 1-0 win. Not many bigger hits than that in that postseason.
all in the suit – YESSSS!!! That’s exactly why I didn’t mention it, because I didn’t think I needed to.
I know it’s easy to forget context after almost 9 years, but Verlander was the best pitcher in baseball for the month leading up to that game. He had a 34-inning scoreless streak going into that 7th inning. He left the game after the 8th inning, giving up only 3 other hits and walking just one with 10 K’s.
While we will never know for certain, if not for Nap’s homerun the Sox probably lose that game … and that means a Game 7 with Verlander on regular rest.
Fever: Yes! Yes! and Yes!
My sentiments as well ,suit,.I think the temp.was in the low 40`s and that was an absolute bomb.Sox fans loved him because he was one of us,in the stores,on the streets,a real good man..
Well said Bergy.
bergy – If the Sox re-sign Schwarber, I think he’ll become the new Napoli. They have a LOT of similarities, shared qualities.
I don’t even remember it! They say short term memory is the first to go. Apparently not in my case…
Do you really see him re-signed? I envision a big bat righty like Castellanos or Bryant if they open the checkbook as I believe will happen.
The thing I’ll always remember about the “13 World Series was the eager, hungry, and super confidant body language of all the Sox hitters. Every dude on that team acted like he couldn’t wait to get the chance to be a hero. The Cards’ pitchers looked intimidated as hell. Even though Papi had the huge numbers, I’ve always credited Napoli with bringing that swagger to the team. He looked the same way in the “11 Series for the Rangers. I hated watching the Cards get embarrassed the way they did, but I came away with a lot of respect for the attitude of Napoli and the entire Sox lineup.
A club certainly can’t win without a “Quality Assurance Coach”. Viva la cronyism!
Was this written in 2011?
2013 red sox had the highest babip in a century
literally a lucky team that year
I don’t think luck got them through the postseason. They faced a lot of good pitchers – Price and Moore on the Rays; Verlander, Scherzer and Sanchez on the Tigers; Wainwright and Wacha on the Cardinals.
Papi magic or Papi juiced magic is why the team won and yes stole a championship like the 69 Mets and 03 Marlins. All different clubs but none were picked by many to even be close to making the playoffs.
I think a few other guys like Jon Lester, John Lackey, Koji Uehara, Mike Napoli, Dustin Pedroia, Stephen Drew, Xander Bogaerts, Jonny Gomes, Shane Victorino, Jacoby Ellsbury, Daniel Nava, Mike Carp, David Ross, Jarrod Saltalamacchia, Clay Buchholz, Felix Dubront, Junichi Tazawa and Brandon Workman also had something to do with it.
I wonder how close Pedroia would’ve come to HOF numbers had he not been hurt so often. Maybe he still makes it IDK he had a decent run from 2007-2017.
Of course they did but the team was not expected to win and got carried by Papi’s amazing Playoffs (juiced or not).
He had. great career and was probably on target to make it through longevity had he not gotten injured. His total body of work however seems far short of Getting him into the HOF.
Did you use Mike Napoli’s contributions in your argument as to how more people are to thank than Mike Napoli? Lmao
dewey – Three guys basically carried the team in the postseason.
Ortiz – 1.206 OPS
Lester – 1.56 ERA
Koji – 0.66 ERA, 7 Hits, 0 Walks, 16 K’s in 13 2/3 IP
All three were other-worldly.
Wowwwww: I was replying to Dewey who was crediting only David Ortiz with the WS win (not Napoli). Read it again.
True but when I think of 13, I think of Papi’s HR against the Tigers. Without that miracle, there was no championship.
Alli in the suit, see my above comment. That one HR to me is the defining moment of 13. That said, baseball is a team sport so of course credit has to be spread around.
Dewey – add the 2021 Braves to your list as beating the Dodgers and Astros were not a given. They were not as unexpected as the teams you mentioned, but not many MLB fans would have picked them before the season started.
But the Braves at the start of the year we’re expected to win the East
But not the World Series.
….big difference
Greg Maddux and company in the Bobby Cox years won 13 division title, went to 5 World Series, and only won 1…….if memory service me correctly. I am not a Braves fan, but I would have loved to see them win a lot more instead especially against the Yankees.
dombrowski could never build the tigers a bullpen. it killed them that year
The team batting splits in the ’13 ALCS and WS were brutal. Sox hit .202 with a .609 OPS in the CS and still managed to get the W. Their WS team BA excluding Papi was .168
People still rely on the useless “BABIP”? OMG that’s too funny.
So a batter who hits the ball really hard almost every time is just “lucky”.
And a batter who, instead of being a dead pull hitter like some, has the ability to guide the ball where they ain’t is just “lucky”.
And a bloop single counts just as much as a line drive double to the gap.
It saddens me when stats are misused.
I’ve never seen someone use BABIP for an entire team. That seems like an exceedingly useless stat.
Also on this day 40 years ago the Angels would sign 36 year old Reggie Jackson to a three year contract. Reggie would tie Gorman Thomas for the MLB lead in HR’s that season
And on this day in 1998 Rickey Henderson would become the first player to have four seperate stints with same team as he signed a one year contract to return to Oakland after splitting the previous season with the Padres and Angels
Shout out to Napoli Vince 🙂
“So let’s fast-forward to this date eight years ago when the Red Sox added another pretty good first baseman/designated hitter: Mike Napoli”
I think it was 9, not 8.
Writers don’t get paid to do math.
One of the best free agent signings of all time?!? I’m a Sox fan and his signing isn’t even in our top 10.
Siesta!!!
He was a great member of that 13 team.
Napoli is one of those players who was great by being on a pretty good team that protected and obscured the holes in his game and inflated his face value offensive numbers a bit. The fact that he faded into obscurity with decreasing salaries the rest of his career and the Red Sox only gave him two more years after that $5M base $13M total year says a lot. It was also the second best season of his career and I think it was his first year of free agency?
That $5M base salary was 100% a fair and accurate payment for his services and he only produced about $37.4M worth of play for $45M. Basically, the Red Sox’s original 3 years/$39M agreement with Napoli was perfect, but their concerns and reset to 1 year/$5M was also prescient and good economics as well.
Anyway, I think the Red Sox and Napoli got very very lucky with his 2013 production and that 2 year/$32M extension was more of an overpriced thank you than it was a well deserved extension.
He definitely had one of the more bizarre careers where he did just well enough to make some serious money but nobody ever signed him to an albatross deal and his peak salaries helped him get bounce back contracts with inflated values to them when comparable players would have maybe received a $2-4M guarantee or a minor league split contract with a $1.5M major league salary attached, etc.
I think he made about $15M more than he should have on the back of that 2013 season, but spread across 5 seasons that’s a small overpay for the MLB and a huge benefit personally to the player.
Definitely the kind of guy who probably shouldn’t have made more than $6M a season in Free Agency and averaged $10.1M over that period.
Good for Napoli.
Napoli was traded for Vernon Wells on Jan 21, 2011. That’s a much more interesting transaction.
Always hated him and that hideous grungy beard. All that pine tar on his helmet and everything. I get the red sox thing is being edgy or whatever but at some point you gotta dress like a professional. Boston has always had a number of slobs over the years tho.
Yappi – Do you think David Wells dressed like a professional for the Yankees?
How about Oscar Gamble’s hair?
Nick Swisher’s mohawk?