Maybe David Ortiz and the Red Sox won't get to arbitration, after all.
Ortiz is the last unsigned Sox who's eligible for salary arbitration, but he told mlb.com that his representatives are working on a multiyear contract with the Red Sox and he's hopeful a deal will be struck.
"We are working on that right now," Ortiz said. "Hopefully, we will get to an agreement so we don't have to go in front of the judge."
You'd think the Red Sox would be unlikely to offer a multiyear contract to their 36-year-old designated hitter -- if they wanted to go in that direction, they could have done so last summer -- but they could be discussing one year plus an option, with vesting options that would guarantee the contract after a certain level of production.
Then there's matter of salary. Ortiz filed at 16.5 million, which is a lot -- as in, A Lot -- of money for a DH. (Especially an elderly one, in baseball years at least.) The Sox countered at 12.5 million, which is still high in today's designated hitter market. A midpoint agreement seems unlikely, so it's also possible the Sox are offering more years if Ortiz is willing to take less money.