Red Sox icon David Ortiz of course retired following the 2016 season. Despite his dominating absence, the Red Sox are very well poised to contend for the championship in 2017.

That's in part due to the recent trade for lefty ace Chris Sale, a blockbuster that inspired Big Papi to tease us thus ...

My god😳😳😳 my boy sale to Btown? You guys got me thinking 🤔?

A photo posted by David Ortiz (@davidortiz) on

Yep, that's an implicit reference to the possibility that he'll play in 2017 after all.

Of course he's joking. He's almost certainly joking. Definitely probably joking.

Anyhow, the question of an Ortiz comeback was of course put to team pit boss Dave Dombrowski following that Instagram post you see above. Via Brian MacPherson of the Providence Journal, here's what Dombrowski had to say ...

"I wouldn't want to reach out to him. I wouldn't want to keep bothering him."

That's more politely brushing aside the speculation than forcefully batting it down, so feel free to continue apace with the speculation and wish-casting. Also, those who read too much into things will note that "keep bothering him" can be parsed to suggest that Dombrowski has previously bothered him on at least one occasion.

For those hopelessly tethered to the likely realities, MacPherson's piece has the reasons why Dombrowski assumes Ortiz was joking about all of this.

In any event, the Red Sox are likely poised to open the season with Hanley Ramirez as the primary DH now that Mitch Moreland has been signed to play first base. That's fine, but it's not an arrangement that's going to replace Ortiz's 1.021 OPS from a season ago. To be fair, though, almost nothing could replace that.

Developing? Of course not. Almost certainly.