Plympton91 said:I think the Red Sox now and those in Ortiz's corner could also point out that he regularly plays 1B without embarrassing himself in National League parks during interleague and has started at 1B in every World Series game the Red Sox have played in an NL park (displacing Millar, Youkilis, and Napoli in the process, so not a no brainer if he were in fact a defensive liability). He's played 32 regular season games at 1B since 2007 with only 1 error, further demonstrating that he could play 1B without being a disaster defensively if he needed to. In contrast, during the latter stage of his career, Edgar Martinez played a total of 8 games in the field combined from 1999 to 2004, none after 2001.
He played a very good 1B in the World Series, and seeing him on the field, fooling around (when he pulled an Andrus on a pop up to Pedroia) or generally bantering and encouraging teammates made me want to see more of him playing 1B regularly, but his knees probably would not take it.