(edit: I posted this on a Sox forum (SOSH), but considering the Liverpool precedent, I figure it belongs here too)
I'm understanding of the situation. Would I prefer to have Mookie on my team in 2020 and beyond? Yes. To steal a popular line from a way back... "That's a clown question, bro". Mookie is one of the five best players in the league. He made the Red Sox better. He's going to make the Dodgers better. He'll make whatever team he's on in 2021 and beyond better.
But it's like ripping off a band-aid. To be done cleanly, it had to be done quickly. This is not the result of John Henry suddenly deciding "Well, I don't want to spend any more money on the Red Sox." The years leading up to this had so many inflection points.
There was so many times that the Sox could have faced the music and tried to set things up for a sustainable, successful future that were missed. For example, after the 2018 title, the Red Sox resigned Sale and Eovaldi for high value. The reason? There wasn't too much on the market, and Red Sox fans wouldn't accept stepping back after a season where they won the title. While Dombrowski's the one who did the move, Henry obviously had to sign off on it, and I'm betting that's a decision he's regretted bitterly.
I've seen some Red Sox fans say "The difference between the Sox offer and Mookie's demand was $120 million. The Red Sox are worth five billion. PAY THE MAN HIS MONEY". Again, I have some sympathy for that view. But let's look at the situation as it stood this off season.
If you pay Betts somewhere close to his 12/420 demand, you're not only adding 35 million a year in salary, but over the next three years, you're adding an extra $100 million in luxury tax payments and further crippling the farm system with Draft Pick Penalties. And to surround Betts with future players (because again, the farm system cupboard is pretty freaking bare without this trade, not ot mention any possible penalties if Cora is found to have brought the sign stealing system to the Sox) just keeps adding more and more and more and more. There has to be a point where even Billionaires can't countenance it.
In Verdugo and Graterol, we get two top 100 prospects. This season was already treading downhill, thanks to injury concerns, especially when it comes to lack of pitching that can survive a season. Oh yeah, and the Sox don't have a manager, thanks to the Astros (and Red Sox) sign stealing controversies. That's why the over/under on the Sox 2020 season only went down ONE WIN (from 87.5 to 86.5) after trading a top 10 MVP candidate and a still pretty good (if injury risky and way overpaid) pitcher.
It's not like John Henry hasn't had a record of bringing the Sox success. Four titles in fifteen years is something that just about any team in any sport would love to have. And being a fan of soccer, I have a somewhat similar situation to fall back on, and surprise it's a John Henry-owned team. Liverpool was forced to sell one of the best players in the world, Phillipe Coutinho to Barcelona, and a lot of people wondered if Liverpool would just simply become just another selling team when the big clubs called. Now they have the largest lead in Premier League history, are the champions of Europe (and the World), and look to go from strength to strength.
Once it became clear that signing Mookie and keeping a championship-calibre team around him would require oh, say a spare half-billion or so (and that number would not go down, only UP), then it became time to face the music, take the medicine and try to set up something so that when we slide from the heights, we catch ourselves before it turns into a full fledged fall to the bottom, and start climbing back up.
It sucks. It really does. I mean, we're talking about a player that did THIS in a meaningless end-season game last year.
https://youtu.be/WQsd3QcLoIc?t=344But there was really no good options here.
Oh, and I'd still have John Henry as my owner over just about any other owner our there. Think of it this way, we could be the Mets clown car of ownership. Or more accurately for this board, Man Yoo's ownership.