BOSTON — Modern baseball, with its luxury tax leveling the playing field, is increasingly won in the margins, like card counters at a blackjack table. It entails moving defenders around like chess pieces, player evaluations based on launch angles and spin rates, and versatile rosters designed to provide a minute edge.

The Los Angeles Dodgers like to believe that they are ahead of the curve. They have used their substantial financial resources to build a Swiss Army knife roster chock-full of former All-Stars, providing such flexibility that, as General Manager Farhan Zaidi said recently, there is no such thing as a bad matchup.

But Manager Dave Roberts’s incessant tinkering imploded on Tuesday night at the most inopportune time, as pinch-hitter Eduardo Nunez — in the game to counter a pitching move by Roberts — belted a three-run, seventh-inning homer that sealed the Boston Red Sox’s 8-4 victory in the opener of the 2018 World Series.

[World Series Game 2: Follow our live coverage of the Dodgers vs. Red Sox]

It was the first meeting between the two storied franchises in the World Series since 1916, and a rare Series-opening meeting of elite pitchers — Clayton Kershaw of the Dodgers and Chris Sale of the Red Sox — that was undone by the best offenses in each league.