John Marzano Olympic Hero said:
Right. But the Red Sox front office isn't going to get into a bidding war over a 39-year-old designated hitter.
The Yankees have five people that can be their designated hitter in 2015. I don't believe that Jeter is retiring this year. They also have Teixeira. ARod may be back with them. They signed Carlos Beltran to a three-year deal. Brain McCann will undoubtedly get some at bats as a DH. If the Yankees sign David Ortiz to DH, they're more than dumb. And Ortiz isn't going to take a one-year deal to move to New York, he'll want a minimum of two, possibly three. The Yankees won't sign him.
And the Yankees have a "propensity" (Ellsbury and Damon, right?) for signing former Red Sox players in the prime or close to the prime of their career. Not one in the late stages of his career, unless you count Luis Tiant.
Texas? With Rios (assuming the team picks up his option), Choo, Fielder and Beltre all could be DHs. And the Tigers make the most sense, but again, Ortiz isn't going to Detroit for a one-year deal. And the Tigers (or the Ranger or the Yankees) will have to really make it worth his while with both years and money. I don't see any team granting a $18M+ payday to a DH who is closing in on 40. If the other teams do, then I'll be sad to see him go, but that's business.
And yes, Ortiz is very important to the Red Sox lineup, but he's going to retire within the next two or three years anyway. The front office has a contingency plan, they just bump it up a year.
One has nothing to do with another. Ortiz' value to the Red Sox is irrelevant to how much another team pays him. It's only relevant to how much the Red Sox would pay him. Why would the Tigers care how much he's worth to the Red Sox and why would they overpay him for that?
Your point may be true, but Ortiz doesn't have a ton of leverage here. The team that will probably pay him the most is the Boston Red Sox and they've taken care of him for the last 11 seasons. It seems kind of dumb to talk about taking your bat and going to another club when the Red Sox have your rights for the next year and there might not be a ton of suitors next winter.
To your last point, my argument was never that Ortiz has a shit ton of leverage. It's that it isn't the purely one-sided situation that Dan presented. Whether we agree on Texas, NY, Detroit or another team, all it takes is one. And if David puts up a stellar 2014 (admittedly, not a slam dunk), it would not be a shock if Ortiz, butt hurt over not getting that extra year before the 2014 season, bolted for whichever team said "screw it, having David Ortiz for one year at $18 mm isn't going to kill us, and it might be that thing that pushes us over the top."
As to the Yankees, their propensity isn't limited to Ellsbury and Damon. Cashman has also brought in Bellhorn, Lowe, Embree, Minky, Myers and Youks since 2005. Many of those guys were indeed in the latter stages of their careers. During that same period, I believe the only former Yankees signed by the Sox were David Wells and Alfredo Aceves. Now maybe there were good baseball reasons for all of those NY moves, and maybe Cashman has some special motivation when it comes to former Red Sox.
Your point about who the Yankees have clogging up the DH position is well taken, but life is full of surprises and the Yankees giving Ortiz one or two years, and him taking it, wouldn't shock me. All it would take would be him being pissed that he wasn't extended before this season, the Yankees deciding that the candidates they have for DH had under performed in 2014 or could play their respective positions well enough, and the Yankees delighting in sticking it to the Sox. Three years strikes me as a red herring and sorry, and we're talking about a team that has regularly spent liberally and just shelled out almost half a billion to free agents. I don't think two years would be necessary but them giving David an extra year to clinch the deal isn't a huge stretch.
Last, each of the players you mentioned can be explained away. Teix may stay on first where he has been great defensively. Teix might also continue to slide offensively, making him a bad solution for DH. A-Rod playing ever again in NY is an open question given all the nonsense. Jeter is the hardest to explain away as he really belongs as a DH given how terrible he is now at SS. But even there, how surprising would it be to see him walk away if he has another weak or injury prone season? And while Beltran and McCann may need to see some time at DH, signing David would not preclude that as an aging Ortiz would need a rest from time to time.
All of that said, I think this is purely academic as I think it would be a huge upset if Ben doesn't tack on an extra year before the season starts.
