I'm going to have a heart attack and die from this surprise!

The headline on ESPN? Varitek to return to Red Sox. This is almost as good as the Yankees winning the World Series a week ago today. Just how bad was Jason Varitek last year? So bad that the Red Sox declined their one year, $5 million option to retain him. So bad that he hit a career low .209, and scorched an 80 OPS+. (80!).

At least he's strong defensively, right? That is correct, if throwing out only 10 of 118 base runners is strong. That's less than 9%. That is bad. 25% of base runners thrown out or above is good. Varitek is so bad at catching, which is his job, that if you combined him with another bad catcher you'd still have a bad catcher. Nevermind that he is also a terrible batter, which is his other job. If you were this bad at your two jobs you'd be unemployed, and divorced.

According to the Boston pitching staff, Varitek calls a good game. This is the professional baseball catcher equivalent of saying a girl has a great personality. Sure, it's nice that it's there, but at the end of the day most guys would rather have the girl equivalent of a cannon for a right arm and an OPS+ like this guy.

By now you must be wondering how a catcher who can't hit, throw, or run, gets to keep his job. It turns out that he has a player option for $3 million. No, you're not confused. Somehow, magically, in fairyla--er, Beantown, contracts are written with both ball club AND player options. This makes sense? No, it doesn't. But it must make for great negotiations.

Theo Epstein: Jason, we're not going to exercise our option to keep you. I'm...sorry.

Jason Varitek: Well, Theo, you then leave me no choice but to exercise my option to keep me. I'm...sorry.

Added bonus? This quote, from the boy genius himself: "We're happy to have Jason back and we look forward to a good year from him in 2010." So happy that they tried to get rid of him, but couldn't, because whoever green-lit that contract clause is an idiot. I'm sure that by "good year" Theo meant an OPS+ of 85.