Monday was a great day for the newlywed Kenley Jansen, whose five-year, $80 million contract with the Dodgers, and it was a great day for Justin Turner, who is closing in on a deal worth about $65 million with L.A. What this means is that the core of Dodgers who played into the National League Championship Series will mostly return intact.

But it wasn’t a good day for Yu Darvish, apparently, or Lorenzo Cain, or Seung Hwan Oh, or Alex Cobb or Danny Duffy or Tony Watson -- players who could represent some of the best of the free-agent class of 2017-2018 offseason. That's because according to sources, the Dodgers intend to adhere to the luxury-tax threshold of $197 million for the 2018 season. This would mean reducing their payroll by more than 20 percent, and unless they do some ninja accounting or dumping some contracts, it may well mean sitting out the conversations for the primary free agents.

After word leaked out about the Dodgers’ impending deals with Jansen and Turner on Monday, there was general astonishment in rival front offices, given the debt that L.A. is already carrying -- Bill Shaikin wrote about that here last month -- and given the staggering payroll and luxury tax the club will carry in 2017. Including the additional benefits extras of about $13 million that are tacked on to each club’s payroll for the sake of accounting, the Dodgers will be close to $250 million next season.

I asked one evaluator for a specific estimate of how much luxury tax the Dodgers will pay next season, and the response was blunt: “A ton!”

Today, Shaikin writes here about why the 2017 luxury tax bill is like tip money for the Dodgers.

But the Dodgers plan cost-cutting as draconian as a college freshmen going on the rice-only diet, apparently enabled by the wave of cheap, young talent coming through the L.A. system -- rookie of the year Corey Seager, pitchers Julio Urias, Jose De Leon and Yadier Alvarez (the best of the prospects from Cuba signed by the Dodgers), and first baseman Cody Bellinger, among others.

Even so, they will have to maintain spending discipline in all other parts of their roster. Assuming the Dodgers don’t pick up the option on outfielder Andre Ethier, the team’s commitments for 2018 are at about $190 million (including the cost of the benefits), with the threshold set for $197 million. Unless the Dodgers can somehow create wiggle room, by perhaps dumping the contracts of Scott Kazmir and/or Brandon McCarthy or others, they will operate with very little margin for more costs if they continue to regard the 2018 luxury-tax threshold as a hard cap.

The Dodgers are going bold, writes Doug Padilla.

The re-signing of Jansen and Turner means the Dodgers can continue to contend, writes Dylan Hernandez. The Dodgers’ reluctance to overpay for a closer was trumped by their need for a top closer, writes Bill Plunkett.

Mark Simon of ESPN Stats & Information sent along this note about Kenley Jansen’s cut fastball:

Jansen makes his living with his cutter. He’s thrown 1,583 of them over the last two seasons by our count, the second-most in baseball. You can make a good case that Jansen’s cutter is the best in baseball.

But it’s not the kind of cutter like the one Mariano Rivera throws. When you imagine a Rivera cutter, you think of one with sharp movement in to a left-handed hitter and away from a right-handed hitter. Recent free-agent signee Mark Melancon throws a cutter like that.

Jansen doesn’t. His cutter is more about velocity, and as the chart below shows, it gets both swings and misses and called strikes, even though the movement doesn’t mimic Rivera’s. His 75 percent strike rate with the pitch over the last 2 seasons is the best in MLB.

Big dollars have been spent on relievers this winter, as Sarah Langs writes:

With Jansen's deal, there have been $290.1M committed to relievers in free-agent deals this offseason.

That's the highest dollar total committed to free-agent relievers in a single offseason. The next-highest total was in 2010, but that offseason encompassed 44 free-agent relievers signing MLB deals (none to a deal worth more than Rafael Soriano's $35M one with the Yankees). This year's has 13 so far.