For the Red Sox, the Mookie Betts deal is not about baseball so much as it is about money, and theoretical flexibility, and the values of the franchise. For the Dodgers, it’s much more straightforward: One of baseball’s best teams has decided that it’s worth it to get even better.
The Dodgers’ position at the start of the offseason was both deeply enviable and anything but. On one hand, they were fresh off their seventh consecutive division title; on the other, the seventh consecutive division title tends to carry a lot of pressure when none of those seven has resulted in a championship.