Major League Baseball’s winter meetings kick off next Monday in Las Vegas. By that time, Red Sox catcher Jason Varitek will have to decide whether or not to accept an offer that could be the best he will receive this winter.

The Sox underscored their interest in bringing back Varitek for at least another year by offering their longtime catcher salary arbitration last night. Varitek has until Sunday to decide whether to accept or reject that proposal.

Usually, such an offer to a free-agent seems like little more than a formality. Teams will offer arbitration to ensure that they receive draft picks as compensation if/when a player bolts for a better deal elsewhere.

But in Varitek’s case, there is reason to believe that he will not see a better offer than arbitration this offseason, whether from the Sox (who can continue to negotiate with Varitek whether he agrees to arbitration or not) or another team.

Granted, Varitek is a three-time All-Star. He is represented by agent Scott Boras, a master of creating markets where none seem to exist. At the G.M. meetings last month, Boras used the four-year, $52.4 million deal signed last offseason by Yankees catcher Jorge Posada (after a career-best offensive season) as a point of comparison for what Varitek might seek.

But those numbers will likely confront a stark reality. Varitek was, in the words of one talent evaluator, a “zero” at the plate in 2008.

His woeful offensive season (career-worst .220 average and .359 slugging, .313 OBP) came at a time when economic woes are forcing teams to approach multi-year deals with extreme caution. There is, naturally, a chance that Varitek will bounce back. All the same, there are legitimate questions about whether, at 36, his days as an elite offensive player are over.

If those concerns are sufficiently widespread, Varitek may well determine by Sunday that he will not see a better contract—or opportunity—than the one he can get from the Sox through arbitration. At least one American League official saw it that way.

“I would think he accepts if offered,” suggested an executive yesterday, before the Sox announced their decision to offer Varitek arbitration. “Can’t see a team going multi-year with him…stranger things have happened of course.”

The likelihood that Varitek will find a better deal from another club—odds that already seemed limited, in a market where the catcher has no declared suitors other than the Sox—became more remote with the offer of arbitration.

Another team would have to offer Varitek more money than what he might receive from the Sox in arbitration (one year, $10-12 million). Moreover, because Varitek is a “Type A” free agent, another team would have to sacrifice a draft pick, perhaps even a first-round selection, that would go to the Sox as part of their compensation for the catcher’s departure.

(For a full description of the sometimes-byzantine rules surrounding draft-pick compensation for free agents, visit this very useful page at SoxProspects.com.)

It was already cheaper in salary for teams to try to trade for a catcher rather than sign a free agent such as Varitek. Now, the cost in players (a high draft pick versus one or more prospects who would be used in a deal) is less imbalanced.

Of course, as the A.L. official pointed out, “stranger things have happened,” and Boras does have a long history of finding lucrative contracts for players surrounded by question marks. (See Ordonez, Magglio; Rodriguez, Pudge; etc.) But the presumption that the superagent will never accept arbitration for prominent free agents is false.

Most famously, Greg Maddux shocked the Braves when he accepted their arbitration offer and signed a one-year, $14.75 million deal in 2002. The future Hall of Famer is not alone among prominent Boras clients who accepted arbitration offers:

--Following a 2001 season in which he hit 73 homers, Barry Bonds accepted the Giants’ arbitration offer. Bonds (and Boras) later signed a four-year, $72 million deal.

--Free-agent pitcher Kevin Millwood rejected a three-year, $30 million contract offer from the Phillies. But after the market for his services proved sluggish, the Boras client—whom the Braves, coincidentally, had to trade when Maddux took their arbitration offer in 2002—accepted Philadelphia’s arbitration offer, then came to terms on a one-year, $11 million deal.

-- Reliever Ron Villone accepted the offer of arbitration in 2004; he and the Mariners agreed to a two-year deal before the start of the 2005 season.

--Just last year, then-Braves outfielder (and Boras client) Andruw Jones insisted that he wanted a multi-year deal. But after he signed a two-year, $36 million deal with the Dodgers, Jones later admitted that he would have accepted arbitration had the Braves offered it.

The lesson? Boras is gifted not only at creating markets, but also at evaluating them. Now that the cost of acquiring Varitek has gone up for 29 teams, the odds seem greater than ever that he will return to the Sox in 2009.

Alex Speier is a Senior Writer for WEEI.com.