The Los Angeles Dodgers and Boston Red Sox consummated one of the wildest trades in baseball history, one of the biggest swaps of contracts in baseball history, and the biggest waiver deal of all time.

The trade of Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford, Josh Beckett, and Nick Punto and $11 million for James Loney, Ivan De Jesus Jr., Jerry Sands, Rubby De La Rosa, and Allen Webster radically alters Boston's roster, ushering in a major overhaul. All the Dodgers did was completely rethink the way baseball teams spend money, and thus run their business.

Until now, every team in baseball has operated with a budget. The Yankees ($198 million this year) might be in a different universe from the Padres ($55 million), but both those teams set spending limits, then do their best to adhere to those limits. In taking on the gigantic contracts of Carl Crawford and Josh Beckett along with Adrian Gonzalez's massive deal, the Dodgers have hinted that budget might not matter all that much to them. The ensuing press conference that the Dodgers brass held on Saturday made the team's position even clearer.

"The value of this franchise is represented in the price we paid — that doesn't go up or down with one or two players' salaries," said Mark Walter, the Dodgers' principal owner and chairman. Walter was then asked if the Dodgers have a spending ceiling. "Somewhere, I suppose," came his oblique reply. Then, the coup de grace. Someone asked Dodgers president and CEO Stan Kasten about the possibility of butting up against MLB's very punitive luxury tax. "Mark and Magic don't even ask me about that," he said of his bosses' instructions, or lack thereof.

Just like that, the Dodgers became the most dangerous team in baseball. Dangerous to other clubs in their ability to outspend the competition anytime they want. And dangerous to owners of baseball's richest teams as well as the commissioner's office, who risk having their excellent and wildly profitable scam exposed.

At some point in the past decade — maybe right after the publication of Moneyball, maybe later than that — the baseball world became obsessed with efficiency. The sabermetrically savvy A's and the scouting-adept Twins got very good while spending less than nearly every other team. The Rays followed suit. Those on-the-cheap wins caused other teams' philosophies, and the way the media cover the sport, to change. The sharpest baseball analysts began using metrics such as marginal dollars per marginal win as a measure of front office acumen, and by extension, team success. Later, dollars per Win Above Replacement became the gold standard for everything from contract analysis to trade analysis to team analysis. General managers might not frame the discussion in exactly those terms. But as team owners started tapping a new wave of economically prudent GMs to run the show, they delivered a clear message to their new hires: If those guys can do it, so can we.

It's a simple idea, really. Until now, every team has put a cap on its spending. For most clubs, the reason is obvious. You don't want to spend more money than your revenue streams will allow, so you try to get the most bang for your buck. If you're the Pirates, you watch the bottom line and do your best to spend wisely, because there's no other way to succeed financially and still put a competitive product on the field.

For a very select group of teams, capping spending and getting everyone talking about budgets, the luxury tax, and efficiency carries an ulterior motive. Take the Yankees. Every team reaps big money from MLB's central fund, with revenue pouring in from national TV deals, MLB Advanced Media, merchandise sales, and other sources. On top of all that, the Yanks pull in gobs of local revenue. According to Forbes's annual "The Business of Baseball" report, the Yankees banked $319 million in gate receipts in 2009. That figure might be the tip of an enormous iceberg. The Yankees are co-owners of the YES Network, the most-watched regional sports network in the country. Also in '09, YES paid the team $84 million in rights fees. The partnership further yielded more than $100 million in dividend checks. But the Yankees aren't required to divulge all the financial particulars of their relationship with YES (nor with anything else to do with their operations). It's a mortal lock they're making way more than what's been made public.

Which is why it's hilarious to see the Yankees making it known they plan to slip under the $189 million luxury tax threshold in time for 2014. As Jayson Stark's informative piece on the new collective bargaining agreement explained back in January, there are real, significant financial reasons to start getting frugal: The top luxury-tax rate for four-time repeat offenders is rising to 50 percent from 40 percent; a team that slices payroll below the $189 million mark by 2014 resets its count and gets taxed at just 17.5 percent, as if it were a first-time offender; and a team that avoids going over the luxury-tax threshold becomes eligible to get money back from its revenue-sharing payout. As Stark explains, all of those savings could add up to $40 million a year for the Yankees.

All of which is great, except for this: The Yankees would almost certainly turn a huge profit even if they didn't save that $40 million, even after paying out the $100 million-plus a year they already dole out in revenue sharing … hell, even if they carried a $300 million payroll. Ask The Lords of the Realm, and they'll claim that the luxury tax is a way to keep the richest teams from spending too much, thus aiding competitive balance. This is total bullshit. The luxury tax exists to save owners from themselves, and to provide a convenient excuse for teams that could easily spend more to pocket the money instead.

Again, very few teams spend enough money to make the luxury tax a major threat. Fewer still can even begin to rival the Yankees' local TV money. The Texas Rangers stand to make $1.6 billion from their new deal … but haven't put forth anywhere near what the biggest-spending clubs have dished out, coming in at an all-time high of $120.5 million in 2012. Knowing they had $3 billion in new TV money coming, the Angels went on an exorbitant spending spree last offseason … but they still shelled out a relatively modest $154.5 million in salaries this year, just the fourth-highest mark in baseball.

No, the team that comes closest to the Yankees in highlighting the absurdity of luxury-tax maneuvering is the same team that's already spent the second-most on luxury-tax fines. It's the same team that also owns its own, incredibly profitable regional sports network, rather than having to negotiate for rights fees with a big media company. It's the same team that, until recently, seemed poised to go toe-to-toe with the Yankees in the standings, to turn what...