LOS ANGELES — Xander Bogaerts won his second World Series in 2018 at Dodger Stadium. A young Mookie Betts did not make it to Boston in time for the one that Bogaerts won five years earlier as a rookie, but after a couple of last-place finishes in the AL East in 2014 and 2015, three straight division crown had culminated in a super team winning 108 games and another World Series.

A bright future in Boston seemed to be unfolding in front of the two Red Sox stars.

Only it didn’t play out that way.

Betts was traded to Los Angeles ahead of the 2020 season. Bogaerts opted out of his six-year, $132 million extension after the 2022 season and landed in San Diego.

Six years after leading the Red Sox to their most recent World Series, the two former teammates are standing in each other’s ways as rivals on the West Coast.

“He was the first one to leave and that really took a hit on our team, our organization,” Bogaerts recalled. “Taking our best player, trading him to another team, that was really tough. Since then, pretty much for his whole career, he’s been the best or one of the best players in the game. So credit to him and all his hard work and what a guy that he is.

“He’s special for sure.”

In Los Angeles, Betts has become a postseason mainstay, hitting .262/.353/.393 with three homers in 38 games in helping the Dodgers win a World Series in 2020 and push as deep as the NLCS in 2021.

As for Bogaerts, his Red Sox advanced as far as the ALCS in 2021 without Betts, but he had not been back to the postseason since then until the Padres clinched the NL’s top wild-card spot this year.

After last year’s Padres flopped, Bogaerts is making sure his new teammates understand the rarity of the opportunity in front of them.

“After winning my first year, I kind of thought this was how it was supposed to be or how it was going to be,” said Bogaerts, who was 0-for-7 against the Braves before driving in two runs on two hits on Saturday. “I think the next two years we were last place, so that was tough. I tell them, like, appreciate getting this far isn’t by luck or by accident, and appreciate it because you never know when you’ll get an opportunity to be at this stage again.”

Tipping point?

Including Saturday’s start, the Padres have scored 13 runs in three games (9 IP) started by Yoshinobu Yamamoto in his first season in the States.

The Padres jumped Yamamoto for five runs in one inning in South Korea in his MLB debut in March, hit two homers off him in five innings in an April start and chased him from Saturday’s start with five runs on five hits and two walks after just three innings.

Yamamoto’s ineffectiveness was so pronounced that Dodgers manager Dave Roberts wondered if the 26-year-old Japanese import was tipping his pitches.

“There’s some things that I think we’re going to dig into because I think at second base they had some things with his glove and giving away some pitches,” Roberts said. “We’re going to clean that up. That’s part of baseball. So it’s on us to kind of clean that up and not give away what pitch he’s going to throw.”

To Roberts’ point, Fernando Tatis Jr. was on second base when Manny Machado pulled a 1-2 splitter out to left to stake the Padres to a 3-0 lead. Tatis was also the runner on second for Bogaerts’ two-run double in the third.

Walker Buehler and Landon Knack are the Dodgers’ presumed starters for Game 3 and 4, although the team has not announced plans beyond Sunday.

Yamamoto and Jack Flaherty would be in consideration for Game 5, if necessary.