It was never going to be easy to move on from David Ortiz. But before the Boston Red Sox concluded there was no reasonable way to replace Big Papi's bat in the middle of the order, they traveled halfway around the world to make sure.
Last season, as Ortiz was putting up video-game numbers -- 48 doubles, 38 homers, a majors-leading 1.021 OPS -- in his final major-league season, Red Sox senior vice president of player personnel Allard Baird flew to Changwon, South Korea, to get a look at a slugger who was doing much of the same.