Hardball Hyperhole: Chapter 3

In today’s edition, for more than five years, David Ortiz had underachieved as a member of the Minnesota Twins. But then he signed with the Red Sox prior to the 2003 season and everything began to turn for him and a cursed franchise. The big slugger, who seemed to make it his mission to kill the Yankees, became Big Papi and he went on to forge a Hall of Fame career.

Here’s what we knew about David Ortiz when he showed up in Fort Myers, Florida for his first spring training with the Red Sox in February 2003 representing, though no one knew it at the time, the turning point for a perpetually cursed franchise in the throes of an 85-year World Series drought.

After spending parts of six seasons with the Twins, all of which included either time in the minor leagues or stints on the injured list, the massive Dominican-born slugger was going into his age 27 season and still hadn’t made a viable mark as a major leaguer.

His resume showed 455 games played, 1,693 plate appearances, and only 58 home runs with Minnesota which, given his physique and swing just didn’t seem possible. How could that guy have hit only 58 home runs, on average just one every 29 times he stood in the batters’ box?

Needless to say, the Yankees and their fans didn’t pay much attention when the Red Sox signed Ortiz to a one-year free agent contract worth $1.25 million.

Well, the Yankees and their fans certainly paid attention for the next 14 years.

Ortiz had become a free agent after 2002 - a year in which he set career highs with 20 home runs and 75 RBI - when Twins general manager Terry Ryan decided it was time to move in a new direction, and Ortiz agreed. By this point, Ortiz wasn’t providing value as a first baseman, mainly because Minnesota manager Tom Kelly had given up on him as a fielder. His contributions came mostly as the primary designated hitter, and this created a huge rift between the player and the manager.

“I don’t think he really liked me. I don’t know why,” Ortiz said of Kelly. “That was his style, not just with me. He was hard on young players. He was the kind of manager who liked veteran players. He never liked me.”

Even though Kelly had retired in 2001 and Ortiz got along fine with his replacement, Ron Gardenhire, he was looking for a fresh start and Ryan was willing to give it to him. Knowing Ortiz would be in position for a sizable raise via arbitration well beyond the $950,000 he earned in 2002, and recognizing Minnesota’s always tight budget constraints which required Ryan to build his roster with versatile players capable of playing multiple roles, he knew he couldn’t keep Ortiz.

What Ryan hadn’t planned on, though, was just giving Ortiz away for nothing. He firmly believed that after the promising offensive season Ortiz had just completed, he would bring back a useful asset in a trade, either a player or a draft pick. Instead, Ryan found no takers. Not one team was willing to send Minnesota anything for Ortiz, so on Dec. 16, the Twins simply released him into the world of unrestricted free agency.

“I would have much preferred to be able to trade him and to find a home for him with another club,” Ryan said years later. “We just couldn’t get it done. We made a bad baseball decision.”

Looking back now, it’s hard to fathom that it cost nothing more than money for Ortiz to wind up in Boston, destined to become the greatest Yankee tormentor in the history of the rivalry.

This was a new era for the Red Sox, the moment in time when they became a truly worthy adversary for the Yankees. Theo Epstein - who had joined the team in 2001 as an assistant to general manager Mike Port - was promoted to the top job following the 2002 season, making him the youngest GM in the sport’s history at the age of 29. Epstein brought an entirely new philosophy to player evaluation and roster construction, leaning hard into analytics. So much so that he convinced the Red Sox to bring on the foremost baseball nerd in the world, Bill James, to serve as a consultant.

Epstein stepped into a situation where tensions were high in Boston. The Sox were riding a streak of five consecutive second-place finishes behind the hated Yankees in the AL East and they hadn’t made the playoffs in the last three seasons. The new ownership group, which had come into power at the end of 2001 with John Henry as the majority stakeholder, was willing to try almost anything Epstein proposed to reverse that trend. Without that sea change in the organization, Ortiz is exactly the type of player the old Red Sox probably would have passed on.

But before they could sign him, the boy wonder Epstein needed to trim some of the fat off the payroll, and that meant moving on from veterans such as infielders Tony Clark, Brian Daubach, Jose Offermann, Rey Sanchez and Carlos Baerga, outfielders Cliff Floyd and Rickey Henderson, and pitcher Dustin Hermanson, among others.

The fact that Ortiz was on the open market for nearly six weeks was an indication that not everyone in the Red Sox front office was on board with him. The tipping point occurred when Red Sox superstar Pedro Martinez called Epstein and implored him to sign the guy. Martinez remembered an August 2002 game against the Twins, one of only four losses he would suffer that season, when Ortiz had crushed a home run off him, a line drive that just kept rising and rising before it crash-landed in the right-field seats at the Metrodome. Pedro’s advice to Epstein? Sign that guy.

And it made sense because with Clark and Daubach, the two players who had shared first base in 2002, out of the picture, the Sox needed a first baseman. Finally, on Jan. 22, 2003, the decision was made to bring in Ortiz. To be sure, the Boston fan base wasn’t all that wowed, but Pedro’s recommendation aside, Epstein and his new data crunchers saw a huge upside.

Once Ortiz was on board, Epstein continued his re-tooling of the infield. Star shortstop Nomar Garciaparra remained in place, but Epstein signed another ex-Twin who couldn’t wait to get away from Kelly in Minnesota, Todd Walker, to play second base, and he signed ex-Giant and ex-Cub Bill Mueller, a good fielder and a pesky on-base hitter, to compete with holdover Shea Hillenbrand at third.

For depth, Epstein added Kevin Millar and Jeremy Giambi, the brother of Yankees star Jason Giambi, two players who could play a corner outfield spot, DH, or first base if Ortiz faltered. These players joined a nucleus that included Garciaparra, gritty catcher Jason Varitek, left fielder and feared hitting machine Manny Ramirez, pesky leadoff hitter and center fielder Johnny Damon, and right fielder Trot Nixon, another guy who always seemed to save some of his biggest swings for the Yankees.

Millar, who had hit above .300 in each of his last two years with the Marlins, was brought in not so much for his bat, but for his leadership. Epstein recognized he could be one of the keys to instituting the culture the Red Sox were seeking, and Millar certainly proved to be the right man for that job.

“Every team says something about the World Series, but I tell you what, this team right here has the makeup and the nucleus to win,” Millar said near the end of spring training. “Chemistry on a baseball team is something you can’t buy, and for some reason this team has it. I walked in this clubhouse three days and I felt like I’d been here 10 years.”

On the mound, the Red Sox were thin in the rotation behind the incomparable Martinez and the reliable Derek Lowe. Epstein hadn’t been able to sign the unproven Cuban defector Jose Contreras who went to the Yankees, and worse, he couldn’t pull off a trade for Bartolo Colon, a proven major leaguer who was eventually dealt by the Expos to the White Sox.

The reason that deal could not be consummated was that Epstein believed 25-year-old Casey Fossum, Boston’s first-round draft pick in 1999, was going to be ready to take the ball every fifth day after he’d made 12 starts in 2002. The Expos wanted Fossum, but Epstein would not budge.

There was also 38-year-old veteran John Burkett, an innings-eater at this point in his career, and lastly, there was the real wild card, 36-year-old knuckleballer Tim Wakefield. He had been a full-time starter in his first four seasons with the club but a long reliever and spot starter in his last four. His best years seemed behind him, but Epstein was banking on Wakefield to flummox opposing lineups with his junk over the course of at least 200 innings.

In the bullpen, Swiss Army knife Ramiro Mendoza defected from the Yankees and Mike Timlin was also signed to join a nondescript crew that included the likes of Brandon Lyon, Alan Embree, Chad Fox, Todd Jones, Scott Williamson and Scott Sauerbeck. There was, however, a glaring need for a closer, even though Epstein continually said that the Red Sox would be fine with a closer-by-committee approach with manager Grady Little making his decisions based on current performance as well as the upcoming matchups in the eighth and ninth innings.

“When we say we’re not going to have a closer, it doesn’t mean we don’t want a dominant pitcher in the ‘pen,” Epstein said. “Of course we do. Usage pattern is the key. We want to get to the point where the most critical outs are pitched by the best pitchers for that situation, be it in the seventh, eighth or ninth innings.”

Give Epstein a Mariano Rivera and he would have changed his tune on that pretty quickly. After all, since 1996 - the first full season played after the wild-card had been added to the postseason - 44 of the 56 teams who qualified for the playoffs had a closer accrue at least 30 saves. Closers mattered, and at the start of 2003 the Red Sox did not have one.

Which is why Little saying this didn’t make much sense. “We feel like we’ve got a chance to score a lot of runs. The biggest thing you can expect from the team this year, when we do score those runs is we’re going to be able to hold that lead through the seventh, eighth and ninth innings much better than last year.”

Just before Opening Day, Epstein was asked if there was a player out there somewhere who he’d like to acquire who might perhaps be the missing ingredient that could end the Red Sox never-ending World Series drought.

“I like the players we have,” Epstein said. “If you were trying to build a World Series contender, you would be thrilled to start with a core of Pedro Martinez, Derek Lowe, Tim Wakefield, Nomar Garciaparra, Manny Ramirez, Johnny Damon, Jason Varitek and Trot Nixon. Our challenge is to start with this core and build a roster 1 through 25 that creates a winning club.”

No mention of Ortiz because at this point, not even Epstein knew what he truly had. He couldn’t have possibly known before a meaningful pitch had been thrown in 2003 that he had already acquired that very player, the one who would eventually end all the suffering in Boston.

“I’m happy to be playing here,” Ortiz said. “I hope we can get something going and beat the Yankees.”

NEXT WEDNESDAY: The first series of the 2003 regular season took place at Fenway Park May 19-21 and the Yankees won two of three. In between the two New York victories, the Red Sox hammered Jose Contreras, the pitcher who had spurned them in the offseason to sign with the Yankees.