Alden Gonzalez, ESPN Staff Writer
LOS ANGELES — Mookie Betts spent half of his thirty second birthday virtually locked inside Petco Park's batting cage. It was Monday afternoon in San Diego, an off day from an impassioned National League Division Series and a chance for its members to separate from it. Betts took the alternative method. He swung and swung and swung, exterior and indoors, towards gentle tosses and excessive velocity.
Two nights later, after a series-tying Game 4 victory, reduction stuffed the Los Angeles Dodgers' clubhouse. Their season, risky because it could be, had been saved. And Betts had been a catalyst, homering in a second consecutive recreation and following with a run-scoring single. Perhaps, his teammates and coaches hoped, Betts had put his confounding 0-for-22 postseason droop behind him. Perhaps, because the Dodgers put together to confront the rival San Diego Padres in a winner-take-all Game 5 on Friday night time, he can as soon as once more drive their offense.
“Mook's our guy,” Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy stated. “He's one of our leaders. He's still one of the best players in baseball. I know he gets a little bit overshadowed because we have Shohei Ohtani, but that guy's still getting paid $400 million too. He is one of the best players in baseball, and he's been one of the best players in the postseason. I know these last two years haven't shown that, but, I mean, come on. Look at what he's done in the past. He can still do it in the postseason. I think he just needed to get a couple hits to get it out of his head.”
IF THERE WAS a second that appeared to epitomize Betts' struggles in latest playoffs, it got here early in Sunday's Game 2. The first pitch Yu Darvish threw to Betts was a sweeper that didn't tail far sufficient exterior. Betts adopted its path, lofting it deep into the left-field nook for what appeared destined for a house run. It wasn't till Betts acquired halfway to 3rd base that he realized Padres outfielder Jurickson Profar had reached over the wall and traversed an keen group of Dodgers followers to safe the baseball. It was an out, the primary of 4 for Betts on this night time. By the tip of it, his postseason hitless drought — spanning NLDS exits in 2022 and 2023 — had stretched to 22 at-bats, tied for the fourth-longest ever by a former MVP.
After the sport, Betts took no solace within the near-homer.
“They're all outs,” he stated of his at-bats. “So, all terrible.”
Hitters sometimes embrace a process-oriented mindset. If a batter noticed a pitch nicely, if his mechanics have been sound, if he met his bat's barrel with the baseball, he is typically glad, regardless of the end result. So a lot of a hitter's outcomes are out of his management — in spite of everything, pitchers dictate the motion — that focusing solely on the selections that lead as much as them can function a helpful protection mechanism.
Betts is totally different. He cares about his course of, nevertheless it's the outcomes that matter most. A batted ball that ought to have sailed over the fence however resulted in an out would possibly convey him down; a broken-bat single that discovered house within the outfield would possibly get him going. Early within the collection, Dodgers supervisor Dave Roberts may see the strain of snapping his hitless drought bleed into Betts' at-bats.
“It's up to all of us,” Roberts stated the day after Game 2, “to make sure he's in a good head space.”
Roberts deliberate to talk with Betts after the staff made its 120-mile drive south to San Diego. He needed to remind him that he cannot change the previous, particularly not prior Octobers. That he wanted to maintain his concentrate on the current. And that the Dodgers do not want him to be something greater than what he was in the course of the common season. But Roberts by no means had that dialog. Too many of Betts' teammates have been already in his ear.
Their message boiled down to at least one central level: You're nonetheless Mookie Betts.
“He's one of the best at it,” Muncy stated. “Sometimes you just got to remind him that.”
BETTS TOOK A couple-hundred swings within the batting cage Monday, give or take a couple of dozen, leaving some of his teammates to take a seat across the clubhouse and marvel when he could be completed. As the solar was setting, he ventured exterior to hit off a high-velocity pitching machine stationed atop Petco Park's pitching mound.
Betts was joined by Chris Taylor and Andy Pages, two Dodgers place gamers who've been used sparingly in October and wanted to get reacclimated to velocity. Betts stored his focus to the alternative subject, repeatedly lifting pitches towards the right-center-field hole, and spoke intimately with Dodgers hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc after every session.
The 2024 common season was a turbulent one for Betts. He started by transitioning to second base, shifted to shortstop close to the tip of spring coaching, acquired off to an MVP begin offensively, missed practically two months with a fractured left hand, then returned to proper subject and moved into the No. 2 spot within the Dodgers' lineup. Betts nonetheless completed with a .289/.372/.491 slash line, performing 45% above league common based mostly on OPS+. But he developed unhealthy habits close to the tip of September and watched them spill into October.
Most of the off day was spent tweaking Betts' prepitch load in order that his fingers acquired again into a great “launch position” earlier than starting his swing, Van Scoyoc stated. Betts swung till he discovered it.
“That's what I know,” he stated. “I work.”
WHEN BETTS FEELS proper inside a batter's field — when he seems like Mookie Betts — he tends to raise the precise aspect of his higher lip, a half-snarl, like a canine growling at an intruder.
Roberts noticed that look emerge in Game 3 on Tuesday and took solace.
The Dodgers misplaced 6-5 however Betts carried out. He snapped his hitless streak with a first-inning residence run off Profar's glove — Betts was so satisfied it had been caught that he turned towards his dugout earlier than reaching second base — and lined a single to right-center subject in his second at-bat. He adopted with a 97 mph one-hopper that was cleanly fielded by Padres shortstop Xander Bogaerts and a 368-foot fly ball caught by heart fielder Jackson Merrill.
The following morning, the Dodgers discovered Freddie Freeman, nursing a sprained proper ankle, can be unavailable. With their season on the road in Game 4, they'd stage a bullpen recreation with out one of their three finest hitters in entrance of a raucous opposing crowd. Betts minimize via all of it in his first at-bat, working the rely full towards Dylan Cease earlier than sending a 99 mph fastball 403 toes for one more first-inning homer. He adopted it with a two-out, opposite-field RBI single within the second inning, setting the tone in what grew to become an 8-0 rout.
“I worked hard and finally saw one fall,” he stated. “I think we're all right now.”
THE DODGERS ARE the one franchise previously 4 a long time to play a postseason recreation with three MVPs in the identical lineup, having executed so in three of the previous 4 years. Betts was joined by Albert Pujols and Cody Bellinger in 2021 and by Bellinger and Freeman in 2022. Now he hits in entrance of Freeman and behind Ohtani, coming off an unprecedented 50/50 season. But there has at all times been a way that Betts, extra so than anyone else, units the tone.
The build-up to Game 5 has solely emphasised that time. Freeman got here onto the sphere throughout Thursday's exercise with athletic tape wrapped round his proper shoe and took half in gentle working workouts. Roberts expects him to be within the lineup for Game 5 however has repeatedly acknowledged that his standing can change at any second
Ohtani homered within the second at-bat of his postseason debut and singled in his third, then went on a 1-for-10 stretch earlier than a productive Game 4. He is 1-for-8 with three strikeouts this season towards Darvish, the Game 5 starter Ohtani recognized as his “childhood hero.” When Darvish exits, the Padres will confront Ohtani with one of their many lefty relievers.
If the Dodgers are to advance, Betts may need to raise them.
“We need him, and he knows that,” Dodgers left fielder Teoscar Hernandez stated in Spanish. “He's worked really hard to find that rhythm he needs, that rhythm he hadn't found. We're all seeing it now. We're seeing a different Mookie now. We're seeing the MVP.”
