Free Agent Watch: David Ortiz

After the (hilarious) historic collapse of the Boston Red Sox in 2011, they face many questions going into next season. Who will be there manager? What is going to happen with their GM Theo Epstein? How can they make all these bad contracts go away? Among these questions is, are they going to sign David Ortiz? As has become custom, I will look at the previous 3 seasons and see how much Ortiz is worth. Over the last 3 years, Ortiz has put up a 6.9 WAR, 2.3 WAR a year. This is the same as Todd Helton, less than half of Ian Kinsler's, about half of Mark Texiera's, and less than half of Ben Zobrist's. It is pretty evident that Ortiz is overrated. In the last 3 years Ortiz has made $38.5 million, giving him a 5579 WASP, well over the Halladay Standard. Instead, Ortiz is actually worth $6.9 million. He is actually coming off a year where he had a very nice PAPP (2.25) and a solid PPG (1.44) and he still gets on base (.398 OBP), so he can very valuable in the lineup, but he can't field, and he can't run, which really hurts his overall WAR. He still has a 7.6 Runs Created per game and his Offensive Winning percentage is .713. He is still a very good offensive tool, but not worth what the Red Sox have been paying him. My guess is that the Red Sox will overpay him and keep him.