OK, yes, I panicked when I saw the headline and first paragraph of this story on ESPN.com tonight.

“Dodgers part ways with Adrian Gonzalez in five-player deal with Braves.”

“The Atlanta Braves traded outfielder Matt Kemp to the Los Angeles Dodgers for Adrian Gonzalez, Brandon McCarthy, Scott Kazmir and Charlie Culberson, the teams announced Saturday.”

You can see how that could be alarming: Kemp, 33, a player the Dodgers soured on in his first stint with the club, returning to Los Angeles?

Why?

What sort of madness had gripped the Dodgers’ front office?

They get one game from a championship, and they think they can take the final step by adding Matt Kemp, a guy who doesn’t care about being good?

Then I got down to the “salary dump” portion of the story, and it made some sense.

And then I saw this story in the Los Angeles Times, and it made a lot more sense.

I especially like the part about how the Dodgers had traded for a player they “might never activate”. Meaning Kemp.

It does seem a teeny bit odd that the Dodgers, who have had the highest payroll in Major League Baseball for several years, would suddenly be worried about too much money going to players.

But it is explicable by noting that the primary idea, expressed by Andrew Friedman, club president, is to bank $30 million or so for what could be the crucial 2018-19 free-agent window — when Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Josh Donaldson, Charlie Blackmon and a guy named Clayton Kershaw may be on the market.

The Dodgers save money because they do not have to pay the $50-plus million due next season to Gonzalez ($22.4 million), Kazmir ($17.7m) and McCarthy ($11.5m).

The Dodgers led MLB in player-pay in 2017, at $253.6 million (says The Times) and, because that puts them into luxury-tax territory, they owe another $36.2 million. That’s real money even to the Dodgers.

Kemp has two years left (together worth $43 million) on his current contract, but the Dodgers are expected to move him somewhere else, and even if it costs them a big chunk of that $43 million to get another team to take him, they still are better off on the money side.

Their goal is to get below the luxury tax, said by LAT to be $197 million for the 2018 season, avoiding a charge of 50 cents on the dollar for all money on the high side of that figure.

It rankles, a bit, to see Adrian Gonzalez treated in what seems cavalier fashion, given his five-plus seasons for the Dodgers as a mostly productive and pleasant first baseman and a leading figure in the club’s outreach to Mexican-American fans.

That rankling is tempered, a bit, by Gonzalez, 35, having waived his no-trade clause, given that the Dodgers are committed to Clay Bellinger, 22, at first base. Gonzalez was waived by the Braves and now can search MLB looking for another playing opportunity.

We need feel no pity for pitchers Kazmir and McCarthy, who between them gave the Dodgers five seasons — during which they did not do much.

Oddly, Culberson, a utility man, may be remembered longer than the two pitchers by Dodgers fans for hitting the division-clinching walk-off home run — at Vin Scully’s farewell home game — during  the 2016 season.

The Dodgers have been patiently building an organization with at least two clubs’ worth of useful players, seeking to divide the 162-game effort among something like 50 guys — even when half of them are in the minors at any given moment. (Fifty-two players appeared in at least one game during the 2017 season.)

The Dodgers were not serious contenders in the Giancarlo Stanton derby, nor were they able to convince Japanese phenom Shohei Ohtani to join the club.

So, they move on. Without four guys they did not really need and another who they do not really want.