In an offseason characterized by departures from past leaders, players and ways of doing business, the last thing the Red Sox needed was for the longest-tenured player on the active roster, David Ortiz, to arrive at spring training with the slings and arrows of an arbitration hearing ringing in his head, steam coming from his ears, and resentment rolling off his tongue.
That’s in part why the Sox settled with Big Papi on Monday on a one-year, $14.575 million deal, hours before his arbitration case was to be heard.
An appeased Ortiz is good for the Red Sox, both as a baseball team and as a product that needs a pitchman besides the manager. Every day has been Valentine’s Day for the Sox with the voluble Bobby V since upper management foisted him on new GM Ben Cherington.
After a season that ended in disarray and disharmony, the last thing the Sox needed was to start this season on a contentious note. If there is one player on the Red Sox you don’t want to go to arbitration with it’s Ortiz, who as sensitive as a sunburned supermodel.
This is a guy who barged into Francona’s press conference last season with an obscenity-laced tirade over a run batted in -- one RBI -- with the indignation of someone who had just been told he was fired. He’s the same player who was incensed with the media and Francona after he was pinch-hit for in Toronto in April 2010, when he was batting .154. He’s the same player who was enraged by a NESN post-game poll that season that asked whether he should remain the designated hitter.
Real, imagined, or somewhere in between, Ortiz is finely-tuned to every slight or insult, and he usually holds a grudge longer than he does his follow-through on a home run. Taking his case to arbitration was like taking a bottle of kerosene to the clubhouse and waiting for Ortiz to provide the spark.
