ESPN Boston: The Boston Red Sox on Monday agreed to a three-year, $39 million contract with free-agent first baseman/catcher Mike Napoli, pending a physical, a baseball source with direct knowledge of the negotiations told ESPNDallas.com.
Why do the Red Sox like Mike Napoli? His career numbers at Fenway Park, where he is 19-for-62 with 7 homers and 4 doubles in 74 plate appearances, seem to tell the story.
Napoli, who visited Boston late last month, is expected to play primarily at first base for the Red Sox.
Napoli's physical will take place Wednesday, a source said, and his signing likely will be announced at week's end.
He was identified early on as a logical target to fill the Red Sox's need at first and gives the club another option behind the plate if general manager Ben Cherington elects to shop Jarrod Saltalamacchia at the winter meetings. But Saltalamacchia sounded confident Saturday that he is very much a part of the team's plans moving forward, and a baseball source said Monday that he has gotten no indication that the Sox intend to move Saltalamacchia.
Napoli has never played more than 70 games at first base, which he did in 2010, when the Angels'Kendrys Morales fractured his leg in a freak accident and Napoli was pressed into duty as a replacement.
This past season, Napoli caught 72 games for the Rangers, but the most he has caught in his career is 96 games (2009), and at age 31, he might be receptive to making a more permanent position switch to first base.
"I just want to play," Napoli recently told ESPNDallas.com. "I feel the most comfortable behind the plate because that's where most of my reps have been. Do I think I can be good at first base if I had reps and practiced it all the time? Yes. But it's not like I'm saying I have to be a catcher. I just want to be in the lineup and play. If it helps at catcher, I'll catch, or at first base, I'll play there. But I like catching. I look at myself as catcher."
