The Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays will begin their battle for the 2025 World Series on October 24. Boston Red Sox fans could find it hard to pick a rooting interest, since the Dodgers won last season and the Jays are a division rival.
Mookie Betts alone could be enough to pull Sox fans over to LA's side. Bostonians still have love for the future Hall of Famer after his untimely departure from the Red Sox organization in 2020. Betts also isn't afraid to make his affinity for his time with the Red Sox clear.
Rob Bradford of WEEI attended World Series media day and asked Betts if the 2025 season was the most satisfying of his career — he changed positions after a troubling offseason and returned to his second Fall Classic in a row. Sox fans will love his answer (which unfortunately might reopen the wound of the disastrous trade nearly six years ago).
"I would say '18 is probably the most satisfying year. Hope I can do that again," Betts said. "...I think just the whole year itself — the way I played, having a baby — it was a lot of things that kind of went positive that year."
Mookie Betts says 2018 season, World Series with Red Sox were most satisfying of his career
‘I would say ‘18’was the most satisfying’ - Mookie Betts pic.twitter.com/dml5nLFn4g
— Rob Bradford (@bradfo) October 23, 2025
Betts' 2018 campaign was one of the most impressive Red Sox seasons in recent memory. He slashed .346/.438/.640 with a 1.078 OPS, his batting average and slugging percentage led the league, along with his 129 runs and 10.7 bWAR. He posted 11 outs above average, which ranked in the 98th percentile among right fielders. Betts' outstanding year earned him an All-Star nomination, a Gold Glove, a Silver Slugger, AL MVP, and he went on to win the World Series with the winningest Red Sox team of all time.
Betts posted the worst offensive season of his career in 2025 after a stomach illness during spring training caused him to drop almost 30 pounds at a rapid pace. He also played 148 games at shortstop this year without any significant infield experience in the majors. The 33-year-old batted .244/.315/.381 over the first half of the 2025 season, but rebounded nicely after the All-Star break with a .279/.342/.442 over 61 games.
As the Dodgers push to win two World Series in a row and become the first team to do so since the Yankees won three straight from 1998-2000, reporters and fans have expressed varying opinions on whether or not LA's exorbitant payroll is "ruining baseball." If it is, the Red Sox should, at least, be partially to blame. It's been years since Boston has fielded such an all-around excellent player as Betts and it traded him to Los Angeles for next to nothing.
The Betts trade is in the past, and although it's been hard for Red Sox fans to move on, it's still nice to hear that the longtime outfielder remembers his tenure in Boston as fondly as fans do. If he wins his fourth World Series this year, it will be well deserved, but Sox fans will always take the time to wonder about what could've been had he been able to post another 2018-caliber season in Boston.