How a Red Sox win streak delayed Mookie Betts trade

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Three wins.

That might have been the difference between Mookie Betts not having been dealt out of Boston last July instead of just this past week.

During Wednesday's press conference introducing Betts and David Price as Dodgers, Los Angeles president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman revealed that conversations with the Red Sox regarding Betts weren't limited to this offseason.

Andrew Friedman said he discussed trading for Mookie Betts with Dave Dombrowski last July. Asked if they made progress, Friedman said the Red Sox won a bunch of games in a row and the Red Sox stopped the discussions.

— Jorge Castillo (@jorgecastillo) February 12, 2020

The proclamation lines up with talk throughout baseball during this Hot Stove season, with some executives privately wondering if Chaim Bloom was sitting in Dombrowski's chair at the time if a deal would have gone down. Bloom was, after all, part of a Tampa Bay front office that dealt Price to Detroit heading into the pitcher's contract year at the 2014 non-waiver trade deadline.

Why was it pulled off the table this time around? Three straight wins against the Yankees.

By the time the Red Sox beat New York for a third consecutive victory on July 27 they found themselves ahead of Tampa Bay and 1/2-game out of a Wild Card berth. With just a few days before the trade deadline, it was hard to imagine that Dombrowski wouldn't need Betts for what was shaping up as a meaningful stretch drive.

But starting with the final game of that four-game series against the Yankees, the Red Sox went into a tailspin, losing eight straight with the trade deadline coming and going without any significant change one way or another.

The decision not to trade Betts at that time is notable considering what the Red Sox could have potentially gotten back. With 1 1/2 seasons of control, a team would surely pay a steeper price than the Dodgers ultimately ponied up this week.

When it comes to rebuilding these Red Sox, those three wins sure seemed to matter.