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Alex Speier

Have the Red Sox gutted their farm system?

Michael Kopech pitched for the Surprise Saguaros in the Arizona Fall League.Stan Grossfeld/Globe Staff

OXON HILL, Md. — Shock spread quickly in the lobby of the Gaylord National hotel, home of Major League Baseball’s Winter Meetings, as word of the blockbuster trade spread Tuesday: The Red Sox had landed lefthander Chris Sale from the White Sox.

The shock reflected in equal measure the audacity of what the Red Sox had done — acquiring arguably one of the three best pitchers in the game — and what they’d given up to do so. A number of evaluators couldn’t help but reach the conclusion: The Red Sox have gutted their farm system.

The Sox gave up a player who’d just been decorated as Baseball America’s Minor League Player of the Year, Yoan Moncada, as well as three other prospects among the top 20 in their farm system: No. 4 (and top pitching prospect) Michael Kopech; an athletic outfielder with the chance to be an above-average everyday player in No. 8 Luis Alexander Basabe; and No. 20 Victor Diaz, who emerged as perhaps the organization’s top pure relief prospect by the end of the season, with a fastball approaching triple digits that he complemented with two potential above-average secondary pitches (splitter and slider).

That followed a deal earlier in the day in which the Red Sox parted ways with their No. 7 prospect (middle infielder Mauricio Dubon), their No. 16 prospect (righthander Josh Pennington), and a young, cost-controlled, inexpensive corner infielder in Travis Shaw.

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Make no mistake: Sale is a game-changer. A front of the rotation that features Sale, reigning AL Cy Young winner Rick Porcello, and lefthander David Price — along with options such as lefties Eduardo Rodriguez and Drew Pomeranz and righties Steven Wright and Clay Buchholz — is formidable.

“Now we get to face [Sale] six times a year,” noted one AL East evaluator. “[Expletive]!”

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The Red Sox have created a striking window of legitimate World Series aspirations for at least the next three years. They have Sale, Price, Porcello, Rodriguez, and Wright under team control in the rotation, along with the positional core of Xander Bogaerts, Mookie Betts, Jackie Bradley Jr., and Andrew Benintendi, as well as players on the not-too-distant horizon like first baseman Sam Travis and third baseman Rafael Devers.

Still, there is a case to be made that the Red Sox opened that window while risking the formation of a cliff on the other side of it.

The new collective bargaining agreement — with stiffer penalties for teams that blow past the luxury-tax threshold — makes young, controllable players enormously valuable, the chips necessary to delve into the markets for expensive players such as Price, or, in the much-anticipated offseason of 2018-19, Bryce Harper and Manny Machado.

Those players who can be valuable contributors while making close to the major league minimum of $535,000 are roster-changers who permit big-market teams to flex their financial muscle.

The Sox, an organization that has had profound difficulty cultivating starting pitchers in recent years, have in the span of five months dealt two of the best young arms in righthander Anderson Espinoza (sent to San Diego for Pomeranz) and now Kopech.

They’ve traded away a position player with considerable risk based on his strikeout rate but also MVP-caliber upside (Moncada), another player who looks like at least an average major league outfielder (Manuel Margot, sent to San Diego last winter for Craig Kimbrel), a player who represented strong middle-infield depth (Dubon), and another high-risk/high-reward player with the potential to be a Gold Glove shortstop with power (Javier Guerra, who struggled badly in 2016 after being dealt to the Padres for Kimbrel).

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One National League evaluator had viewed the Red Sox farm system as capable of fueling a “Big Red Machine”-like run, a pipeline that would yield steady big league impact. Now? They may have traded the notion of long-term sustainability — and organizational depth — to augment the core.

There is, of course, something to be said for doing so. Dombrowski and the Sox are fueled by the thought of championships, this year’s achievement of making the playoffs feeling a bit anticlimactic.

And Dombrowski, who has four years left on his deal, has reason to care far more about 2017-19 than he does about 2020-25. He was hired to make these sorts of deals, to take advantage of his rich farm system with bold moves — something he’s done repeatedly, and something he’s not apologetic about doing now.

“In baseball, four years down the road is like an eternity in many ways,” said Dombrowski. “So you need to try to take advantage of that opportunity.

“Every one of these moves made us better. Because of the strength of the system that people built and because of the young players that we still have, I think we’re still strong for many, many years.”

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It’s important to note that the two headliners the Red Sox sent to the White Sox possess risk. Moncada’s ceiling is remarkable, but he is still an unfinished product with a need to make considerable progress in his offensive approach. The fact that he finished the year with strikeouts in nine consecutive plate appearances highlighted the gap that exists between his present skills and his major league readiness.

“It’s a different level up there,” Moncada said Sunday through translator Jo Hastings. “It’s just a totally different level. The pitchers think different. The players think different.

“I have to do a lot of adjusting — a lot of adjusting. It comes with experience. Everything’s a work in progress.”

Moncada’s swing-and-miss struggles, some challenges he’s faced remaining healthy, and his future position all could keep him from reaching his peak value.

Kopech, meanwhile, features the sort of electrifying arm that suggests front-of-the-rotation/Noah Syndergaard potential. Yet he faces a host of variables — whether he can develop the control, changeup, and pitch efficiency to be a starter instead of reliever; whether someone who so regularly dials up 100-m.p.h. pitches can remain healthy; and whether he will remain clear of the off-field troubles (suspension for a banned stimulant, broken hand in a fight with a teammate).

There is risk with Moncada and Kopech. There is an established track record of dominance for Sale — even if he presents some risk of his own, given the velocity decline and diminished strikeout rates, perhaps by design, that he experienced in 2016.

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Yet as a team like the Phillies can attest, life can become pretty ugly for franchises that focus on a win-now window at the expense of the longer term. Even as the Red Sox have achieved a clear roster upgrade in the immediate term without giving up any of the current projected big league starters, there is at least a growing chance of a reckoning some years down the road.

Ultimately, if the Red Sox add to their collection of championship flags between now and then — or if the same domestic and international scouting operations that positioned the organization to make these deals can refill the system — then those concerns might be rendered moot.

But if this compelling big league roster, with little upper-level depth beneath it, turns into a second coming of the much-anticipated 2011 club while players like Moncada and Kopech flourish elsewhere, then this organizational pivot under Dombrowski may be viewed at some point as too extreme.

Time — and championship rings — will tell the story of whether the Red Sox’ willingness to stack all of their chips behind their current core will prove an act of overzealousness or one of inspiration in pursuit of baseball’s ultimate prize.