On December 16, 2002, Twins general manager Terry Ryan released him. They haven't won a postseason series since, and haven't won a postseason game since 2004.
On January 22, 2003, Ortiz signed as a free agent with the Boston Red Sox. From this date onward came 482 of his 541 career home runs, all 10 of his All-Star Game appearances, all 7 of his Silver Slugger Awards, all 3 of his RBI leaderships, and all 3 of his World Series wins.
At the time, Torii Hunter was a star center fielder for the Twins. He once told MLB.com, "The worst mistake Terry Ryan ever made was to non-tender David Ortiz. Boston got a diamond in the rough in 2003, and gave him a shot. He led those boys to the World Series championships. David Ortiz turned that franchise around. They might not say it, but I saw it."
Sure seems like the Twins letting him go was a dumb move. It was so dumb!
How dumb was it?
Not as dumb as you might think.
Top 5 Reasons You Can't Blame the Minnesota Twins for Not Re-Signing David Ortiz
5. The Minnesota Twins. In 2002, they won the American League Central Division. It is true that Ortiz gave them 75 RBIs that season. But they also got 94 from Hunter, 85 from left fielder Jacque Jones, 69 from 3rd baseman Corey Koskie, 64 from 1st baseman Doug Mientkiewicz, 59 from shortstop Cristian Guzman, 49 from catcher A.J. Pierzynski in just 130 games, 46 from reserve outfielder Bobby Kielty in 112, and 45 from reserve outfielder Dustan Mohr in 120.
Ortiz did hit 20 home runs, but in the Metrodome, a.k.a. the Homerdome, that was to be expected. And Hunter (29) and Jones (27) each had more.
Like Ortiz, Jones, Koskie, Mientkiewic and Pierzynski were lefthanded hitters. Guzman and Kielty were switch-hitters. Kielty, Koskie, Mientkiewicz and Jones all had better on-base percentages than Ortiz. Pretty much all of them were better baserunners. And Ortiz played a grand total of 15 games in the field, at 1st base. His remaining 110 games were as either a designated hitter or a pinch-hitter.
Without Ortiz, the Twins won the Division again in 2003, 2004, 2006, 2009 and 2010, and finished 1 game back in 2008. To put it bluntly, he was surplus to requirements. True, the Twins have never won another postseason series. But what they really needed to do that was better pitching, something Ortiz couldn't do. (At least, he never tried. I looked it up: He never threw a pitch in the major leagues.)
4. Injuries. Ortiz suffered a broken wrist in 1998. He broke it again in 2001. Each time, he ended up missing 2 months. The 2nd time, his hitting collapsed upon his return. Even in 2002, his last season in Minnesota, he only appeared in 125 games -- 77 percent of the season.
3. David Ortiz -- as he was then. As a 2016 Sporting News article said:
Then there was Ortiz, a nice hitter with some pop entering his age 27 season, but a platoon designated hitter.
Ortiz had hit .203/.256/.381 against left-handers in 2002. If you want to fault the Twins for being cheap, that’s within your rights, but if you accept that this was a team trying to contend on a shoestring, it made a good amount of sense to prioritize members of the young core with established track records over paying Ortiz somewhere in the $2 million range.
In other words, if he had wanted to stay in Minnesota, he wasn't exactly helping his own cause.
2. Cheating. In 2003, his 1st season with the Red Sox, David Ortiz failed a test for performance-enhancing drugs. Everything he achieved in Boston is suspect. Nothing he did, no game or award he won, can be taken seriously.
1. Disgrace. It's bad enough to be remembered as a franchise that exists in its current location because of the prejudice of Calvin Griffith, who left majority-black Washington, D.C. for Minnesota, then mostly white, in 1961. (If knowing about Dave Winfield, Prince and Ilhan Omar didn't remind us that Minneapolis has black people, the protests over the police murder of George Floyd made it unforgettable.) But would you want to be remembered as the team of the most blatant cheater in the history of baseball?
Or, to put it another way: Who really hates the Minnesota Twins? Not very many people. The Twins won the 1987 World Series by beating the St. Louis Cardinals, and the 1991 World Series by beating the Atlanta Braves. But neither team's fans hated the Twins for doing that -- and even if they did then, it's been 33 and 29 years, respectively. You don't see Yankee Fans hating the Miami Marlins for beating them in 2003, do you? And that was considerably more recent.
Even the Minnesota-Wisconsin rivalry doesn't really come into effect. The Twins and the Milwaukee Brewers were only in the same Division for 2 years. Divisional Play began in 1969. In 1970, the Seattle Pilots moved to Milwaukee, became the Brewers, and spent that season and 1971 in the AL West with the Twins. In 1972, the "new" Washington Senators, who took the place of the team that became the Twins in 1961, moved to become the Texas Rangers, and the Brewers were kicked over to the AL East. In 1998, the Brewers were moved to the NL.
So now, Twins vs. Brewers is just another Interleague matchup, not a regional feud like Vikings vs. Packers, or Timberwolves vs. Bucks, or Gophers vs. Badgers. Sure, Twins fans want to beat the Brewers, but they just don't play each other often enough to make it a serious rivalry.
But we've seen how neutrals react to teams that are seen to have cheated, truthfully or otherwise. Some fans will never forgive the San Francisco Giants for Barry Bonds. The Yankees and the Red Sox are still considered steroid cheats, even though there is far more evidence against the Red Sox. In the NFL, the New England Patriots are forever branded. People over the age of 50 can remember the Dallas Cowboys and the Oakland Raiders cheating. In hockey, half the sport's fans think Sidney Crosby is a god, and the other half think he's a diving little twerp.
And now, look how everybody outside of South Texas looks at the Houston Astros.
If Ortiz had stayed in Minnesota, and had still used steroids, and had led the Twins to win 3 World Series as he did with the Red Sox, do you think the self-appointed moralizers among baseball fans (Disclaimer: Myself included) would have let them off the hook? Not a chance.
VERDICT: Not Guilty. In the long run, the Minnesota Twins were better off without David Ortiz. Not as well off as the Boston Red Sox were with Ortiz, but better off than they, the Twins, would have been with him.