One big beneficiary of the free-agent largess — and particularly the $280M deal for Xander Bogaerts — is his longtime Red Sox teammate Rafael Devers. And sources say a Devers extension is Boston’s “No. 1 priority,” which never seemed true for Bogaerts.

“They have to give him whatever he wants,” one baseball exec said. “Can they really let him go too?”

Regarding Devers, Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer Chaim Boom said by text, “Our efforts are only intensifying — but it’s something we’ve really wanted to do for a while and hopefully we’ll be able to find that path.”

The Red Sox were offering Devers in the mid $200Ms after already bumping it quite a bit, but now his $300M asking price seems reasonable. After all, he’s four years younger than Bogaerts.

While we know about Boston’s spring offer to Bogaerts to add one year and $30M to make it $90M over four, they offered to bump his deal to $120M in October, and as the Boston Globe reported, they floated a deal for close to $170M at the winter meetings (about $28M a year for six years).

Simultaneously, Boston lost Bogaerts and strengthened Devers’ negotiating position.