The Boston Red Sox have exercised their $7.1 million team option for catcher Victor Martinez which indicates that he’ll be their everyday catcher in 2010.  Meanwhile, the Red Sox have declined the $5 million team option on team captain Jason Varitek.  Varitek holds a $3 million player option that he has to decide within 5 days.

All of this comes one year after Varitek was offered salary arbitration by the Red Sox.  The arbitration would have given Varitek a 1 year salary between $10-12 million, but he declined the offer hoping that he would get more.  Unfortunately, the market softened and he was forced to take the $5 million for 2009 and the dual option as I indicated earlier.  In a sense, he was guaranted a 2 year, $8 million contract, but that’s far less than $10-12 million.  You could point your finger at Scott Boras, his agent, for thinking he could get more than arbitration.

Varitek has been a Sox player his entire career, and there’s no indication that he wants to leave.  However, he’ll have to take the back seat to Martinez or persuade him to play more first base.  The San Francisco Giants are in need of a starting catcher since Bengi Molina is a free agent and their catcher of the future, Buster Posey, won’t be the every day guy until 2011.  Will Varitek accept a $4 million one year offer with the Giants to start 80 games?