Reports have surfaced that Red Sox designated hitter David Ortiz plans to accept the arbitration offer that the team has offered him.
If he does in fact accept the deal, he will return to Boston for the 2012 season.
He had been seeking a pay raise from the Red Sox after earning about $12.5 million last season. The arbitration deal could be worth about $15 million if he takes it.
According to some reports, a two-year deal worth $25 million would have kept Ortiz in Boston, but they retracted the offer before arbitration and instead, offered the hitter a two-year deal worth approximately $18 million.
The team would prefer that Ortiz take the two-year deal because they would only have to pay him about $9 million per season instead of the one-year deal because it would be a lesser hit against their payroll for luxury-tax purposes.
New Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington said the sides are still talking and that the Red Sox "remain hopeful" that Ortiz will return to Boston for next season."That's been our position all along. We haven't agreed to anything yet," Cherington said.
"If there's a way to make it work, we'd like to have him on the team moving forward and potentially have him finish his career with the Red Sox. But we haven't reached an agreement on a contract. We've had good dialogue, and I think there's a good understanding of our respective positions and a lot of mutual respect," Cherington went on to say. "If we don't reach anything by tomorrow, we'll see what his decision is. If we don't and he accepts, then we'll be happy with that outcome."
Bobby Valentine, who the Red Sox hired to replace Terry Francona as the team's manager, apparently traveled to the Dominican Republic to track down Ortiz and hopefully talk about his future with the team.
Ortiz seemed to be happy that Valentine came all that way just to talk to him. Ortiz would go on to say about the visit, "That speaks to me. That's good stuff."
Ortiz, arguably the face of the franchise over the last decade, has hit .289, including 320 home runs and 1,028 runs batted in over his nine-year stint with the Red Sox. Ortiz is also a seven-time All-Star.
