It sounds more and more as if the Mookie Betts Express is on its way out of Boston and headed west. And if Mookie really is on his way out of town, less than two years after being named the Most Valuable Player in the American League and being the best player on a Red Sox team that won 119 games (including the postseason) and a World Series, I hope he is on his way to the Dodgers. If the Sox are going to move him, L.A. would be the best thing for him, and for baseball.

As good as the Dodgers have been over the past four years, averaging 98 wins per season and winning the National League West all four times and going to the World Series twice, they are coming off another heartbreak October -- this one at the hands of the Washington Nationals, against whom Los Angeles had a 2-1 lead in the NLDS, as well as a 3-1 lead late in Game 5. I have been hoping since the end of the season that the Dodgers would make a big move. They couldn’t possibly make a bigger move than acquiring Mookie Betts.

Mike Trout is always going to be down the road in Anaheim. He is the best player in baseball and one of the best of all time, and was recently awarded a contract that makes him the highest-paid player in MLB history. Betts isn’t as good as Trout. But when he was winning that MVP Award over Trout and everybody else two years ago, he was close enough. He has that kind of skill set. He is even a year younger than Trout.

You know there are rumors that have Betts going to the Padres and not the Dodgers, and that would be a tremendous thing for the Padres, looking to make a move and make some Southern California noise of their own after signing Manny Machado as a free agent last winter. But I believe Los Angeles is where Betts ought to be if the Red Sox decide to trade him heading into his last season before free agency.

It sounds almost insane to suggest that the Dodgers need to make a big move after having just won 106 games, more wins than any Dodgers team ever had -- in Los Angeles or in Brooklyn -- previously. But they need to do something to make their fans believe that this season will be different, meaning in October; that this is the year they finally win their first World Series since Kirk Gibson hit that home run off Dennis Eckersley more than 30 years ago and they went on to upset the Oakland A’s in five games.

Betts wouldn't mean the Dodgers are going to win even more regular-season games. As good as Gerrit Cole is, maybe the Yankees don’t win more than the 103 games they won last season. There is still a reason why Yankees fans are as excited as they are about the 2020 season. The Yanks made their own big move for Cole. Everybody thinks they’re on their way back to the World Series for the first time since '09. Betts in a Dodgers uniform, playing in Dodger Stadium, would give the Dodgers a much better chance of waiting for New York at the end of October, and giving us the first Yankees-Dodgers World Series in nearly four decades.

Again: No one knows what is going to happen with Betts. The chance that he might be traded has been one of the hot-button stories of this offseason, especially in Boston, where Red Sox fans are wondering how they got to this point, looking as if they’re suddenly rebuilding, just 15 months from their last Duck Boat Parade through downtown Boston after they beat the Dodgers in the 2018 World Series.

If he is traded, Los Angeles is the best landing place, where he would get a great chance to win another World Series, just on another coast this time. Betts is one of the bright stars of baseball, and he would make an already star-studded Dodgers lineup that much more dynamic.

Dave Roberts’ club is already loaded. And the Dodgers will be a favorite to make it out of the NL for the third time in five years, with or without Betts. It’s why I laugh when there was a suggestion last October that Roberts is on some kind of hot seat. On what planet is there a hot seat like that after the record he’s had in L.A.? The four-year record is 393-256. Four division titles. Two pennants.

I was talking to Roberts the other day about the way last season ended and the upcoming season, and one of the things he said was this:

“I look at the players we have and think about power in numbers.”

Here’s hoping they’re able to add Mookie’s numbers to all the rest of them. Star player. Star town. Such a big baseball story about Betts all winter long. One looking for a Hollywood ending.