Red Sox $1.3 million free agent signing ranked 3rd-best in MLB history

Feb 26, 2026; Fort Myers, Florida, USA; Boston Red Sox players stand on the field during the national anthem before the game against the Tampa Bay Rays at JetBlue Park at Fenway South. Mandatory Credit: Jim Rassol-Imagn Images

Sometimes, a walk back through baseball history can just make you scratch your head.

How about when the Minnesota Twins released David Ortiz after he had put up his best early-career offensive season? The Boston Red Sox certainly aren't complaining.

They initially signed Big Papi to a free agent contract for just one year and $1.3 million. The rest is history.

There have been 50 years of free agency in Major League Baseball, and because of that, ESPN's Bradford Doolittle is ranking the best and worst signings of all time.

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He ranks the Ortiz signing as the third-best in baseball history, behind just Barry Bonds (Giants) and Greg Maddux (Braves), which ironically happened in the same offseason.

Ortiz signed ahead of the 2003 season, and he became a Boston legend.

"You can quibble whether this one belongs, but I'm keeping it," Doolittle wrote in his new article on Friday. "Ortiz wasn't a free agent because he reached any service time requirement, but because the Twins released him, at age 26, even though he was coming off his best season (20 homers, 120 OPS+). Papi finished fifth in AL MVP voting in his first Boston season and kept re-signing and extending until he finally reentered free agency after the 2011 season. By then, he was a legend. And, of course, he never left the Red Sox."

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It's hard to picture Big Papi in any other uniform. Even the fact that he played for the Twins at all is easy to forget.

There are few players more synonymous with the Red Sox than Ortiz, and it's all because Minnesota let him go, and because Boston was willing to take a chance on a guy who didn't really have a defensive position.

The bat, and the charisma, were more than enough.

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