The Red Sox can afford David Price’s ludicrous contract because of their youth

If you’re looking for reasons why the Red Sox needed David Price, you’ll find them here. The Red Sox had a rotation that was a compilation of B-sides, and they tried to pass them off as a hot new album last year. The move failed spectacularly. They needed at least one unimpeachable pitcher, and they were willing to spend. That’s how Price got more guaranteed money than any pitcher in history.

Price will get seven years and $217 million, and people want to know if it was too much. Ha ha ha, of course it was too much. Every free agent starts the offseason with a fistful of reasonable offers, then slides them back across the table and growls, “Now make them unreasonable.” Free agency is an irrational auction run by rational people who get sucked into the irrational. The best-case scenario is for Price to pitch so well over the next three years that he exercises his opt-out clause. The worst-case scenario is just about everything else.

The Red Sox could do it, though. They could melt the payroll for the next few years because there’s a whole ocean of prospects under their feet, and no one can get at it except for them. The Price move isn’t about stapling a record contract to an aging roster and hoping he can buoy the rest of the roster; it’s about saddling a young roster with a record contract and figuring the inexpensive youth can easily stay afloat. The Red Sox are taking advantage of how baseball hoses young players to make the older players rich, and it’s not like they should do anything differently. It’s the system, man.

In a perfect world, the Red Sox are hoping for something that’s half 2015 Astros, a lineup and rotation overstuffed with homegrown talent. Blake Swihart behind the plate, making peanuts. Yoan Moncada living up to his pre-signing hype, making peanuts. Mookie Betts and Xander Bogaerts at the left end of the defensive spectrum, making peanuts. Andrew Benintendi coming up and making the oil used to roast the peanuts. A rotation with at least two of Henry Owens, Eduardo Rodriguez and Brian Johnson, not making much money at all. It’s a beautiful, low-cost dream.

It’s not just pie-in-the-sky dreaming. You’ll see it again and again this offseason. The Cubs can afford something shiny because they have Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, Kyle Schwarber, Addison Russell and Jorge Soler all making well below-market money. The Giants can parlay the surprising development of Matt Duffy and Joe Panik, along with the team-friendly Madison Bumgarner contract, into a premium pitcher. Teams that develop can spend. The Red Sox are following the perfect big-market template.

Except this is almost exactly what I wrote about them last year, when they threw bags of money into the whirling rotors of a helicopter:

They built a farm system like a poor team, and they got to take advantage of it like a rich team. There is nothing more dangerous in baseball than a rich team with a great farm system, and the Red Sox just proved it.

It still applies, except now there are caveats. The way they took advantage of the inequities of the prospect-veteran salaries last year was to waste it on two contracts that look ghastly in hindsight. We’re not talking about the Dodgers of last year. We’re not talking about the Yankees of 10 years ago. The Red Sox are a large market team, one of the largest, but they aren’t an unlimited fount of nine-figure contracts. And they already exchanged two of their tokens for two players who might not help a lick next year.

Price might be the last way for them to leverage the future (non) earnings of their young players into a gaudy contract. Combined with deals to Rick Porcello, Dustin Pedroia, Sandoval and Ramirez, the Red Sox will have a true big-market payroll, even with the oodles of young talent. For the next three years, at least, this is the Red Sox declaring that Price is exactly what they’ll need to bridge the gap from now until when all of those above deals expire. Williams help them if Price flops.

Here’s a gentle reminder that young players all take different paths, and some of those paths have cobra pits and downed electrical poles. It’s not fair to suggest the Red Sox are taking an especially dangerous risk by trusting in their young players. Veterans are risky, players in their late 20s are risky, players in their early 20s are risky. Turns out that baseball players are risky. But there have been many, many teams who have counted their Tagg Bozieds before they hatched, and they’re easy to point out.

Those are all the what ifs, though. What we know is this: The Red Sox are an organization besotted with premium talent. They have two of the best young players in the league, which is saying something in a league saturated with an awe-inspiring influx of young talent. They have pitchers, infielders, outfielders, veterans who might bounce back and veterans who might keep going. All they needed was a reliable pitcher or three. They got the most reliable pitcher on the market.

It works on paper. If you’re a Red Sox fan, that should thrill you and terrify you at the same time. Paper can be awesome. Paper can be cruel. But no one disputes that the Red Sox are filled with talent. Now they have David Price. Make your predictions accordingly.