FORT MYERS, Fla. -- Here's why the Boston Red Sox should give David Ortiz a contract extension: It makes good business sense to do so.

Now that's counterintuitive to how the argument is usually framed: Ortiz is 38, the Sox already have him under contract for 2014, no need to do anything now, no one else is going to pay him what the Sox are paying him, he's just bluffing when he talks about leaving if he isn't paid his due.

But the Red Sox should extend him because they've never been in a better financial position to do so: The industry is flush with cash, national TV revenues have taken a big spike, and there's no quantifiable way (at least to these untrained eyes) to measure how Ortiz's contributions have increased the value of the franchise located at 4 Yawkey Way. We have metrics like WAR that can help gauge the dollar value of wins and losses, but that only begins to tell the story of Ortiz's impact on John W. Henry's business venture. We just know it's huge.

It's difficult to quantify David Ortiz's economic impact on the Red Sox franchise, but there's no question it's huge. Michael Ivins/Boston Red Sox/Getty Images

The Red Sox have $62.6 million in contract obligations in 2015, a number that drops all the way to $13.3 million in 2016. John Lackey's AAV of $16.5 million comes off the books, as his salary drops to the major league minimum as the result of a clause that protected the Sox when Lackey lost a year after Tommy John surgery. Another $23 million will be shaved off the payroll when the contracts of Jake Peavy and A.J. Pierzynski expire. OK, so some of that money will go toward a contract extension for Jon Lester that will place him in the $20 million AAV club.

But the Sox also will have a number of low-paid players in key positions who won't even be eligible for salary arbitration in 2015: three positional starters in Xander Bogaerts, Jackie Bradley Jr. and Will Middlebrooks, possibly a rookie catcher (Blake Swihart or Christian Vazquez), and whichever young pitchers make the jump to the big leagues.

It's to the team's credit that the Red Sox put themselves in that position (much of that credit, by the way, goes to Theo Epstein, who drafted most of this young talent). But it also speaks to why the Red Sox should extend Ortiz as quickly as possible, and tack on a club option year so this doesn't have to play out every winter. Maybe even keep those club options going into perpetuity, like they once did with Tim Wakefield.

Would another team pay an approaching-40 designated hitter more than the Red Sox are paying Ortiz? The answer until recently would have been an emphatic no, until you look at the kind of money that was spent on the open market this winter: As of the end of January, teams spent more than $2 billion on 105 free agents. Are you dead certain that if Ortiz has the kind of season in 2014 that he did last year, there might not be a team one big bat away from winning that wouldn't overpay him on a short-term deal?