“I would just tell him it’s a great organization. I would tell him to surround yourself with a good organization. I have a very good relationship with Juan. If I see him before in the Dominican where we live, and we talk, I would tell him that the finances, you know, the finances are whatever, they’ll take care of themselves,” Ortiz told Newsweek Sports on Friday. “I would love for him to go to the Red Sox. He’s a phenomenal player. Go to a good organization. The Red Sox are a great organization; they take care of their players.”
With the Red Sox emerging as one of the top suitors, to have such a well-respected member of the Baseball Hall of Fame recruiting Soto to play in Boston is going to be pretty tough to look past. Soto and Ortiz’s personal relationship has opened the door for the Red Sox to sign the $650 million superstar. Now it’s up to the front office to get the deal done. Ortiz spoke to Newsweek while attending his 16th Annual “Weekend With Papi” Celebrity Gold Classic, raising money for the David Ortiz Childen’s Fund, which raises money for lifesaving pediatric heart surgeries in the Dominican Republic and New England.
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The “Juan Soto sweepstakes” are taking over baseball this winter. Most of the league seems to be at a complete standstill as everybody holds their breath and waits for Soto to sign. There are basically five teams left in the running to acquire Soto: the Boston Red Sox, the New York Yankees,
the New York Mets, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and the Toronto Blue Jays. Make that six teams, if you want to count the Philadelphia Phillies. Each team has its own recruiting pitch. For the Red Sox, they’re going with an all-hands-on-deck approach, which includes Red Sox legend David Ortiz making a pitch to Soto. Ortiz and Soto have a good relationship that’s dated back years. Ortiz was recently asked how he would speak to Soto in order to help recruit him to Boston.
I list him here not necessarily because he falls firmly in the ‘bargain bin’ category, but because he feels like the fall-back option for folks trying to sign Juan Soto, then Teoscar Hernandez, or even Santander for a bopper in their outfield. And much like how the Reds made Candelario their go-to target last year despite there being a handful of higher-profile bats that could have fit their roster, I wonder if the Reds have making O’Neill their primary target might earn his good graces more than a club that actively sought out his peers first before calling him.
O’Neill, when healthy, is good. He’s also Canadian, so maybe they can have a certain #19 give him a call. Tyler bopped 31 homers en route to an .847 OPS with Boston last year, and back in 2021 you’ll recall he smashed 34 for St. Louis in a year in which he finished 8th in NL MVP voting.
(Elly De La Cruz, for reference, just finished 8th in this year’s NL MVP voting.)
He’s also only ever played more than 113 games once in his 7-year career, with knee and hamstring issues dogging him since he first cracked the big leagues back in 2018. So, there’s major risk there for any club, let alone a club like the Reds who’d be paying him enough to want to count on him more often than he’d ever been able to provide before.
If the Reds found a way to move Jonathan India’s $5 million and shake up the logjam in the infield, O’Neill would make a whole lot more sense financially and for the roster as a whole. Do the Reds have that kind of money laying around for 2025, though?
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