What the Boston designated hitter is clearly ticked about, though, is his contract situation. Ortiz, who hit his 400th career home run on Sunday in Oakland, went off after the game about his desire for a multiyear contract.
"If you go crazy and give contracts to whoever comes along despite not knowing how they're going to do, then you don't give me my due consideration, even though I do my thing every year, [expletive] that," Ortiz told USA Today in a Spanish interview after Boston's loss to the A's on Sunday.
The designated hitter is in the midst of a one-year, $14.575 million contract after accepting arbitration in the offseason. Ortiz has made his desire for a multiyear deal known in the past, and he's now threatening to look elsewhere to find that contract.
"I'm going to be open to anything," he told USA Today. "My mentality is not going to be, 'I like it here.' It's going to be 'Bring it to the table, and we'll see what happens.'"
Ortiz shed some light on the offseason dance he did with the club, a negotiaton process that is clearly still weighing on the 36-year-old's mind.
Ortiz was looking for his multiyear deal, but was forced to sign the one-year deal with a modest raise. He saw his annual salary increase $2.025 million from 2011 to 2012 after making $12.5 million last season.
"It was humiliating. There's no reason a guy like me should go through that," he told the paper. "All I was looking for was two years, at the same salary. They ended up giving me $3 million more than that, and look at my numbers this year. Tell me if they wouldn't have been better off.
"And yet they don't hesitate to sign other guys. It was embarrassing."
Ortiz will be the sole Red Sox representative at the All-Star Game in Kansas City next week. After hitting home run No. 400 on Sunday afternoon, Ortiz is now hitting .302 with 22 home runs and 55 RBIs. His .997 OPS would be his highest total since 2007, a season he finished fourth in MVP voting.
