Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington had nothing new to report Wednesday on the status of Mike Napoli’s contract with the Red Sox, but did refer a few times to the need for a first baseman.

“There’s really nothing to comment on,” Cherington said at Ryan Dempster’s introductory news conference. “As with any free agent, until it’s done, it’s not done. We continue to work on different ways to improve the team. I’ll comment on it as soon as I can, but I can’t right now. We’ve had some more dialogue. I wouldn’t classify it as one way or the other. We’ll see what happens. We’re trying to improve the team and hopefully we can do that.”