It is amazing to me in a world where there are far lesser guys either going into a contract year or in their last year being traded at the deadline, that would fetch more than Betts appears to be able to. The guy is the second best baseball player on planet earth, and he's just 28 years old. Yes, last year of a contract. Goldschmidt. Chapman. Lots of other guys dealt for a good return, and here we are imagining deals for Betts that bring back far less of a return? Maybe that's the reality, but it's crazy.
Put it this way, if Betts was on the Pirates, and the Sox were trying to trade for him, there's no way we'd think that a relative bucket of balls would be sufficient to get him, even as he enters the last year of his contract. But alas....these imagined trades are probably not far off, which is mind blowing to me.