The Boston Red Sox plan to replace David Ortiz internally or with a short-term free agent rather than spend excessively on a prominent long-term option.

Ortiz hit 38 home runs, drove in 127 runs and led the Major Leagues with an OPS of 1.021 in the final season of a 20-year career.

"I'm not sure if we're going to do it internally with a lot of the people we have or go outside the organization," Dave Dombrowski said. "We know we can never replace [Ortiz's] presence. But we have a lot of guys who can play different positions. We have young guys coming that we like a great deal, so we'll just kind of have to wait to see what happens there.

"There are a lot of different factors. One is affordability, but not only that. How long do you want to tie somebody up for that position when we have a lot of young players coming? That's a very important part of it."

Edwin Encarnacion, Jose Bautista and Mark Trumbo are among the top power hitters available in free agency.