The listless team of the previous two games was gone. The inspired team of the previous month was back.
Earlier this week fans were asking, who are those guys? On Friday they emphatically answered that question by finally, forcefully, being themselves.
Faced with elimination in Game 6 of the World Series, the Dodgers rose from the presumed dead to haunt the Toronto Blue Jays at the Rogers Centre with a 3-1 victory to knot the duel at three games apiece.
And they did with the most unlikely of saves, a game-ending double play on a lineout that Kiké Hernández caught in left field and threw to Miguel Rojas at second base.
How do the Blue Jays come back from that? How can the Dodgers not gain all the momentum from that?
The quest to become the first team in 25 years to win consecutive World Series championships lives.
The stage is set for all sorts of dramatics after a night when the Dodgers took an early three-run lead on the back of slump-busting Betts and then cruised to victory on the back of another brilliant pitching performance by Yamamoto and a surprising three-inning shutdown from the Dodger bullpen.
It didn’t end smoothly, but it ended splendidly, after reliever Roki Sasaki began the ninth by hitting Alejandro Kirk in the hand with a two-strike pitch, then Addison Barger hit a ball to center field that lodged under the outfield tarp for a ground-rule double.
With runners on second and third and no out, Tyler Glasnow made an emergency appearance and recorded that memorable save, retiring Ernie Clement on a first pitch popout and ending the game by inducing Andrés Giménez into a lineout that Hernandez perfectly threw to Rojas.
The Dodgers have been here before. It was just last year, in fact, when they needed consecutive wins against the San Diego Padres in the division series to save their season.
They calmly won both and rolled to a championship. A similar path could end in a similar destination this weekend after the Dodgers rebounded from two lifeless losses at Dodger Stadium to weather the loud Game 6 storm with calm and cohesion.
“Yeah, I mean, we all know that everything has to go perfect for us to be able to pull this off,” said Teoscar Hernández before the game.
So far, so good, beginning Friday with the much-maligned Betts, who smacked a two-out, two-run single in the third inning to give the Dodgers a lead they never lost. Next up, Yamamoto, who followed consecutive complete games by giving up one run on five hits in six innings.
Enter the bullpen, which had given up nine runs in the Dodgers three losses in this series. But the sense of dread lightened when Justin Wrobleski worked around a two-out double by Clement to end the seventh with a strikeout of Giménez.
On came Sasaki, who immediately found trouble in the eighth inning by yielding a single to George Springer and walking Vladimir Guerrero Jr. But the rookie remained calm, and retired Bo Bichette on a foul popout and Daulton Varsho on a grounder.
This set up the breathtaking ninth, the inspired Dodger tone actually set by manager Dave Roberts a day earlier. Roberts did his best Tommy Lasorda imitation by literally leaving it all on the field during Thursday’s day off when he challenged speedster Hyeseong Kim to a race around the bases. Roberts gave himself a generous head start, but as Kim was passing him up around second base, Roberts tripped and fell flat on his face.
The moment was caught on a video that quickly spread over social media and actually led the FOX broadcast before Friday’s game.
Roberts looked silly. But Roberts also looked brilliant, as his pratfall injected some necessary lightness into the darkening team mood.
“I clearly wasn’t thinking,” said Roberts. “I was trying to add a little levity, that’s for sure. I wasn’t trying to do a face-plant at shortstop, and yeah, the legs just gave way. That will be the last full sprint I ever do in my life.”
He lost, but he won.
“Of course it makes you smile and it makes you have a good time,” said Rojas. “When the head of the group is…loose like that, and he’s willing to do anything, that’s what it tells everybody, that he will do anything for the team.”
The spark was lit in the third inning Friday after Blue Jay starter Kevin Gausman had struck out six of the first seven batters.
Tommy Edman, one of last fall’s postseason heroes, ripped a one-out double down the right-field line. One out later, after Ohtani had been intentionally walked, Will Smith ripped an RBI double off the left-field wall.
It was the Dodgers first hit with runners in scoring position since the fifth inning of Game 3, but the surprise was just beginning.
After Freddie Freeman walked, the bases were loaded for Betts, who was the biggest villain of the Dodgers hitting drought with a .130 World Series average while stranding 25 consecutive baserunners. He had been dropped to third in the batting order in Game 5, and then dropped again to fourth for Game 6, and it finally worked, as he knocked a two-strike fastball into left field to drive in two runs and give the Dodgers a 3-0 lead.
The Blue Jays came back with an heroic run in the bottom of the third when, after Addison Barger doubled down the left-field line, wincing George Springer fought off a painful side injury to drive a ball into right-center field to score Barger.
TORONTO — It was a miserably cold, rainy and gray afternoon outside Rogers Centre on Thursday.
Inside the stadium, however, the Dodgers found some rays of emotional sunshine.
No, this is not where the team wanted to be, facing a 3-2 deficit in the World Series entering Game 6 on Friday night against the Toronto Blue Jays.
And no, there was not much to feel good about after a disastrous 48 hours in Games 4 and 5 of this Fall Classic, in which the Dodgers relinquished control of the series and allowed their title-defense campaign to be put on life support.
But during an off-day workout, the club tried to rebound from that disappointment and reframe the downtrodden mindset that permeated the clubhouse after Game 5.
Every player showed up to the ballpark, even though attendance was optional after a long night of travel.
“That was pretty exciting for me, and just speaks to where these guys are at,” manager Dave Roberts said. “They realize that the job’s not done.”
Roberts brought some levity to the start of the workout, too, challenging speedster Hyeseong Kim to a race around the bases — only to stumble face-first on the turn around second while trying to preserve his comically large head start.
“Cut the cameras,” Roberts yelled to media members, as he playfully grabbed at his hamstring and wiped dirt off his sweatshirt.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts reacts after falling while challenging Hyeseong Kim to a race on the basepaths during a team workout at Rogers Centre on Thursday.
(Vaughn Ridley / Getty Images)
Then, the Dodgers got to work on their primary task: Trying to sync up an offense that had looked lost the last two games, and has scuffled through much of October.
“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this … and I could dive into my thoughts,” Roberts said of the team’s offensive struggles, which he noted could include another lineup alteration for Game 6.
“But I think at the end of the day,” Roberts continued, “they just have to compete and fight in the batter’s box. It’s one-on-one, the hitter versus the pitcher, and that’s it. Really. I mean, I think that that sort of mindset is all I’ll be looking for. And I expect good things to happen from that.”
In the losses at Chavez Ravine, the majors’ second-highest scoring offense struggled to hone that ethos. The Dodgers scored only three runs, racked up a woeful 10 hits and looked more like the version of themselves that stumbled through much of the second half of the season before entering the playoffs on a late-season surge.
Their biggest stars stopped hitting. Their teamwide approach went by the wayside. And in the aftermath of Game 5, they almost seemed to be searching for their identity as a team at the plate — trying to couple their naturally gifted slugging ability, with the need to work more competitive at-bats and earn hittable pitches first.
“We’re just not having good at-bats,” third baseman Max Muncy said.
“We’ve got to figure something out,” echoed shortstop Mookie Betts.
Take a quick glance at the numbers in this World Series, and the Dodgers’ hitting problems are relatively easy to explain.
Shohei Ohtani (who took another Ruthian round of batting practice Thursday) does not have a hit since reaching base nine times in the 18-inning Game 3 marathon. Betts (who spent as much time hitting as anyone Thursday) has bottomed out with a three-for-25 performance.
Other important bats, including Muncy and Tommy Edman, are hitting under .200. And as a team, the Dodgers have 55 strikeouts (11 more than the Blue Jays), a .201 overall average and just six hits in 30 at-bats with runners in scoring position.
“We got a lot of guys who aren’t hot right now, aren’t feeling the best,” Edman said Wednesday night. “But we got to turn the page, and hopefully we can swing it better the next couple days.”
“As a group,” Kiké Hernández added, “it’s time for us to show our character and put up a fight and see what happens. … It’s time for us, for the offense, to show up.”
Better production from Betts would be a good start.
On Wednesday night, the shortstop did not mince words about his recent offensive struggles, saying he has “just been terrible” after batting .164 in 13 games since the start of the National League Division Series.
Roberts tried to take some pressure off the former MVP in Game 5, moving him from second to third in a reshuffled batting order. But after that yielded yet another hitless performance, Roberts further simplified the task for his 33-year-old star.
“Focus on one game, and be good for one game,” Roberts said. “Go out there and compete.”
On Thursday, that was Betts’ focus, with multiple people around the team noting a quiet and renewed confidence he carried into his off-day batting practice session. He had long talks with hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc, special assistant Ron Roenicke and Roberts around the hitting cage. He searched for answers to a swing that, of late, has generated too many shallow pop-ups and mishit balls.
Dodgers teammates Mookie Betts, left, Max Muncy, Tommy Edman and Freddie Freeman wait on the infield during a pitching change in the seventh inning of Game 5 of the World Series on Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
“He looked great,” fellow hitting coach Aaron Bates said. “Actually, his head was in a good place. Good spirits. The whole group, guys were great. Everyone came and showed up and hit and got their work in.”
For the Dodgers to save their season, it isn’t only Betts who will need to find a turnaround.
While Blue Jays starters Shane Bieber and Trey Yesavage pitched well in Games 4 and 5, the Dodgers also seemed to struggle to adapt their plan of attack — getting stuck in an “in-between” state, as both Roberts and several players noted, of both trying to attack fastballs and protect against secondary stuff.
“Sometimes we’re too aggressive,” outfielder Teoscar Hernández said. “Sometimes we’re too patient.”
“It seems like at-bats are snowballing on us right now,” Kiké Hernández added. “We’re getting pitches to hit, we’re missing them. And we’re expanding the zone with two strikes.”
Being “in-between” was a problem for the Dodgers late in the season, when they ranked just 12th in the majors in scoring after the All-Star break. That it is happening again raises a familiar question about the identity of the club.
Do they want to be an aggressive, slugging lineup that lives and dies by the home run? Or more of a contact-minded unit capable of grinding out at-bats and stressing an opposing pitcher’s pitch count. Roberts’ emphasis on better “compete” signaled the need to do more of the latter.
Freeman echoed that notion leading up to Game 5.
“If we’re going up there just trying to hit home runs, it’s just not the name of the game,” Freeman said. “We just need to check down and have, like, almost a 0-1 mindset. Just build innings, extend ‘em, work counts, be who we are.”
So, how do they actually go about doing that, ahead of a Game 6 matchup with a pitcher in Kevin Gausman who excels at mixing his fastball and splitter?
“Basically, you have to keep to your strengths,” Bates said. “And see what the next pitcher brings to the table.”
The only silver lining: The Dodgers have been in this spot before.
Last year, at the very start of their World Series run, they faced a similar situation in the NLDS against the San Diego Padres, winning back-to-back games with clutch offensive outbursts that helped catapult them to an eventual World Series title.
“We can do it again,” Freeman said.
“I think we’re a more talented team than we were last year,” Kike Hernández added.
Entering Friday, they will have two games to prove it. Now or never. Do, or watch their dreams of cementing a dynasty die.
The debate over whether Mookie Betts can play shortstop was settled long ago.
The debate now is whether Mookie Betts can play shortstop better than anyone in baseball. That discussion may soon be drawing to a close, too.
Because a day after being named a finalist for a Gold Glove, Betts put a huge exclamation point on Thursday’s 3-1 playoff win over the Milwaukee Brewers with a spectacular play to start the ninth inning.
The victory leaves the Dodgers a win away from advancing to their second straight World Series, a journey they could complete Friday in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series. And a big reason they’re there is the steady defense of Betts, a six-time Gold Glove winner in the outfield who has made the difficult move to the middle of the infield seem easy.
“I think the only person on this planet that believed that Mookie Betts would be in this conversation was Mookie Betts,” Dodger manager Dave Roberts said. “It’s just something that has never been done. I can’t even — it’s incredible. Obviously I’m at a loss for words.”
Betts tried the position last year but Roberts said the confidence wasn’t there, so he moved Betts back to the outfield. There was no chance that would happen this fall.
Few understand the difficulty of what Betts has done more than those who have played the position. Yet Miguel Rojas, the man Betts replaced at shortstop — and a Gold Glove finalist himself this season as a utility player — said he’s not surprised because he has seen how hard Betts works.
“He doesn’t take days off,” Rojas said of Betts, who is frequently among the first players on the field for pregame drills and among the last to leave. “Even when we have an off day, he’ll still go out there and is asking ways to get better. I think it’s a product of being a relentless worker every single day. He’s never satisfied. He’s always trying to get better.
“For me to be there every single day to watch him perform and watch his work ethic, it’s been impressive.”
Part of that work, Betts said, involves watching video of every fielding play he makes. That includes the brilliant ones, like the ninth-inning play Thursday in which he ranged in the hole to backhand Andrew Vaughn’s grounder, then rose up and delivered a strong one-hop jump throw across his body to first baseman Freddie Freeman to get Vaughn easily.
“I go back and watch all my plays, even the routine ones, just to learn what I can do better,” he said.
Asked if he’s ever surprised by what he sees, Betts, who has yet to make an error in the playoffs, shrugged.
Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts makes a leaping, cross-body throw to retire Andrew Vaughn at first base during the ninth inning of Game 3 of the NLCS on Thursday at Dodger Stadium.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
“I’m just doing my job. I’m just doing my job going out there and playing short, that’s all.
“Once I get to the ball, I believe and trust in my athletic ability to make a play.”
Rojas, who has played six positions in the majors, said shortstop is such a hard place to play because of the mental focus it demands. An outfielder might be able to think about his hitting for a few pitches, but the shortstop, who quarterbacks the infield, doesn’t have that luxury.
“In the middle of the year he was in a slump offensively. But he never let the defense down. And that’s really impressive,” Rojas said. “He always said it to me, ‘Even though I’m sucking right now at hitting, I’m never going to be bad at defense. And I’m going to catch every single ball.’
“That’s the mentality that you have to have to be a really good shortstop.”
In the postseason, he’s become a really good offensive shortstop as well. After slumping to a career-low .258 average in the regular season, Betts is slashing .297/.381/.459 and shares the team lead with 11 hits and five extra-base hits in the postseason.
However, the numbers and the awards mean little to him, he said; Betts cares far more about winning. And as for proving himself at shortstop? Others, including his manager, may be surprised, but he isn’t.
“I know I could do it. I believed in myself. I always have belief in myself,” he said. “It was a goal to be the best I could be. If it came with a Gold Glove, cool. If it didn’t come with a Gold Glove, cool.
“I can go to bed at night knowing that I did everything I could. That’s all I care about.”
Just a season ago there were mornings when he’d get out of that bed wishing he could go back to right field. That doesn’t happen anymore.
“I would say the best athletes are the guys in the dirt,” he said. “It was fun while it lasted. I enjoy being in the dirt now.”
But just the same, the Dodgers outfielder declined to stay with the team at the historic — and allegedly haunted — Pfister Hotel in downtown Milwaukee during the first two games of the National League Championship Series against the Brewers this week.
Hernández told reporters before Game 2 on Tuesday that his wife, Jennifer, was the one who insisted on finding somewhere to stay other than the 137-year-old hotel that has been the source of spooky tales from MLB players for decades.
“I don’t believe in ghosts. I have stayed there before. I never see anything or hear anything,” Hernández said. “But my wife is on this trip, and she says she doesn’t want to stay in there. So we have to find another hotel.”
Hernández added, however, that his wife told him that she has heard from other players and their wives that there had been “something happening” over at the team hotel.
Asked to elaborate, Hernández said he had been told that in “some of the rooms, the lights, goes off and on, and the doors — there are noises, footsteps. … I’m not the guy that I’m gonna be here saying, ‘Oh yeah, I experienced that before,’ because I’m not, and I don’t think I’m gonna experience that.’”
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was asked during his pregame media availability Tuesday if he had any ghost stories to share from the team’s stay at the Pfister.
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“I don’t,” Roberts said. “Those stories went away when I was about 10 years old. So, no, not anymore. I’m OK to go to bed now.”
Over the years, not everyone has been as at ease about staying at the creepy old digs. In 2005, then-Dodgers closer Eric Gagne told The Times’ Steve Henson that the place freaked him out.
“It’s old, weird and scary,” Gagne said. “It’s very creepy. I don’t sleep well there.”
Henson also noted at the time that former Dodgers third baseman Adrián Beltré had “reported a ghostly presence turning on lights and tickling his toes” during a 2001 stay at the Pfister. Fellow Times staff writer Kevin Baxter reported in 2007 that Beltre Beltronce insisted on sleeping with a bat for protection after he had a brush with a ghost” at the hotel.
One-time Dodgers infielder Michael Young told ESPN that he once heard loud stomping noises in his room while he was trying to sleep.
“So I yelled out, ‘Hey! Make yourself at home. Hang out, have a seat, but do not wake me up, OK?’” Young said. “After that, I didn’t hear a thing for the rest of the night.”
Current Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts decided a couple of years ago he doesn’t want to take any chances at the spooky spot.
“I don’t know if they’re real or not, nor do I care,” Betts said of the hotel’s alleged ghosts after a 2023 game against the Brewers in Milwaukee. “My boys are here, so we just got an Airbnb. That’s really it.”
Betts admitted to the Orange County Register that the Airbnb rental was “just in case” the scary stories were true and “it was a good excuse” not to stay at the creepy old building.
Last, during another series in Milwaukee, Betts appeared to confirm that he will continue to find alternative lodging for road games against the Brewers.
“You don’t want to mess with them,” Betts said of the Pfister’s alleged ghosts. “I’m staying at an Airbnb again. That part is not gonna change.”
The Dodgers more than survived their two games in Milwaukee this week, riding dominant performances by starting pitchers Blake Snell and Yoshinobu Yamamoto to take a 2-0 National League Championship Series lead over the Brewers.
The Dodgers who checked in to the Pfister Hotel also appear to have survived another stay in downtown Milwaukee. And with the next three games (if that many are necessary) taking place at Dodger Stadium, they have the chance to make sure they avoid returning to the (allegedly) haunted haunt this postseason.
ROSEMONT, Ill. — At first, landing Lauren Betts was not a plus when it came to getting her little sister to follow her to UCLA.
When Bruins women’s basketball coach Cori Close called Sienna Betts about Lauren transferring from Stanford at her parents’ request, the younger sibling didn’t hide her displeasure.
“UCLA was my school,” Sienna told Close. “I don’t want to go where my sister’s going.”
It took some massaging of the situation to get Sienna back on board with becoming a Bruin. Big sister helped convince Sienna by delivering a PowerPoint presentation about why she should come to Westwood for Lauren’s final college season.
“By the end, there were tears everywhere,” Close said Wednesday at Big Ten media day inside the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center. “It was very heartfelt, it was very genuine. It was just why she wanted to share this experience with her sister and why they needed to share it together.”
It could be a seasonlong joy ride for the sisters after Sienna agreed to join a team that’s been picked to win the Big Ten and contend for the national championship. Lauren and point guard Kiki Rice were selected to the preseason all-conference team and could be joined on the postseason version by teammates Gianna Kneepkens and Charlisse Leger-Walker.
UCLA center Lauren Betts goes to the basket against Maryland forward Amari DeBerry, left, during the first half of a game last season.
(Nick Wass / Associated Press)
Sienna is an early candidate for Big Ten freshman of the year based on her dynamic skill set. The 6-foot-4 forward has been playing a lot alongside her 6-7 sister in practice, leading to some unusual exchanges.
“Every once in a while on the court, you’ll hear, like, the bickering from a sister standpoint, you know what I mean?” Rice said. “Like, it’s a special tone, you know, it only happens between siblings and they’ll be like, ‘Lauren, shut up’ or something like that and they get on each other and it happens quick and they move on pretty fast, but it’s always funny.”
Having her sister around could free Lauren to operate more on the perimeter, where she’s been working on her outside shot. Plus, it has the added benefit of reducing a little wear on the elder sibling.
“I told her, I was, like, ‘Listen, it’s exhausting running baseline to baseline all the time,’” Lauren cracked. “She can do it once.”
Lauren said she’s helped her sister with learning plays and persevering through tough practices while letting Sienna mostly hang out with fellow freshmen off the court. She’s always wanted what’s best for her sister, as demonstrated by that PowerPoint presentation.
“It was just to show her that, like, this recruiting process isn’t about me, and it’s not to get the Betts sisters to play with each other,” Lauren said. “It’s, I want her here because she’s Sienna Betts and she’s a really important part of our team and she would bring so much to us and she would help us win a national championship.”
Might Lauren put together another UCLA presentation for brother Dylan, a 7-2 center who is another top high school prospect?
“Yeah, his recruiting process is a little different,” Lauren said with a laugh, “so we’ll see.”
Fighting on
Don’t ever expect a concession speech from USC coach Lindsay Gottlieb.
After losing the reigning national player of the year to injury and a starting frontcourt who is now in the WNBA, Gottlieb said her team’s goals don’t change.
“That’s a lot of talent to replace,” Gottlieb said, referring to sidelined star JuJu Watkins and departed post players Kiki Iriafen and Rayah Marshall, “but we look at it in the collective and we say USC women’s basketball is not going anywhere. All the goals that we still have are in front of us. … I think we’ll have the ability to compete at a really high level.”
How do the Trojans replace Watkins, who is out for the season because of a torn knee ligament? It will be a collective effort led by returning guard Kennedy Smith, freshman phenom Jazzy Davidson and five transfers.
“No one’s gonna be JuJu, no one’s trying to be JuJu,” Gottlieb said, “but I think we can put a team on the floor that’s incredibly versatile, that plays an exciting brand of basketball and we’re going to take our shot at achieving our goals.”
Davidson, a 6-1 guard who was the nation’s top high school prospect, is already creating a buzz for a team that was picked by the media to finish third in the Big Ten.
“I don’t compare her to anybody else,” Gottlieb said, “but in terms of the way I felt when JuJu walked in the door as a freshman about her readiness for college basketball, I think Jazzy’s a pretty unique talent and will make an incredible affect not only on us but I think on the national scene.”
Finally united
Six years later, the voicemail that Gottlieb saved from a 14-year-old has additional meaning.
That teenager is now on her team.
Gottlieb was recruiting Londynn Jones when she coached at California and accepted a job with the Cleveland Cavaliers, becoming the first head women’s college coach to be hired by an NBA team. Jones left a congratulatory message tinged with sorrow.
“ ‘Coach,’” Jones said, “‘I’m happy for you, but I’m sad for me, don’t forget about me.’ ”
Now they’re together after Jones transferred from UCLA after helping the Bruins reach the Final Four.
“Here we are,” Gottlieb said, “all these years later.”
After averaging 8.5 points and making 35.1% of her three-pointers last season, Jones could play a new role across town.
“She’s a ballhandler, a distributor, she shoots the three really well,” Gottlieb said, “so I think she was looking for that just sort of ability to be dynamic and show what she’s capable of, but we just need her to be a really kind of solid, all-around contributor.”
Twice as nice
Dreams really do come true. As a freshman, UCLA softball slugger Megan Grant told roommate Amanda Muse, a forward on the basketball team, that it was her dream to play college basketball. Now Grant is on the verge of her debut in a second sport. Close described Grant as a “bully ball kind of player” who would add screening, rebounding and hustle.
PHILADELPHIA — Even Dodgers fans steeped in the lore of Kirk Gibson might not remember the name of Mel Didier.
Didier was the scout who had issued this warning to the 1988 Dodgers: If you’re facing Dennis Eckersley, the mighty closer for the Oakland Athletics, and the count runs full, he’s going to throw a backdoor slider.
Eckersley threw it, Gibson hit it for a home run, and the Dodgers went on to win the World Series.
If these Dodgers go on to win the World Series, no one will struggle to remember the name of Mookie Betts, of course. On Monday, however, Betts pushed the Dodgers to within one win of the National League Championship Series — not with his bat and not with his glove, but with memory and aptitude to rival Didier.
“His mind is so far advanced,” Dodgers coach Dino Ebel said of Betts. “That was the ballgame right there.”
With the tying run at second base and none out in the ninth inning, he was the calm in a screaming madhouse. As the Dodgers infielders gathered at the mound and Alex Vesia entered from the bullpen, Betts thought back to a play he had participated in once, in an August game against the Angels. Miguel Rojas had taught him the so-called “wheel play.”
“All he had to do was tell me once,” Betts said. “To me, that was like a do-or-die situation. Them tying the game up turns all the momentum there. If we can find a way to stop it, that would be great.
“I just made a decision and rolled with it.”
On the mound, amid the bedlam, Betts put on the wheel play. It’s a bunt coverage: with a runner on second base, the third baseman and first baseman charge home, with the idea that one would field the bunt and throw out the runner at third.
In any previous decade, the Dodgers would have practiced this play in spring training, repeatedly.
“We don’t really even practice the wheel play, with pitchers not hitting any more,” third baseman Max Muncy said. “There’s very few times where you’re 100% sure that a guy is going to bunt.”
This was the time. The Phillies had opened the ninth with three consecutive hits, including a two-run double from Nick Castellanos.
The Dodgers led 4-3 with none out and Castellanos on second base. Phillies manager Rob Thomson said he wanted to play for the tie and take his chances to match his team’s bullpen against the Dodgers bullpen in extra innings.
And for the “never bunt” crowd: the chance to score one run is slightly higher with a runner on third base with one out than with a runner on second base and none out. The Phillies had the bottom of the order coming up — starting with infielder Bryson Stott, whom the Dodgers had evaluated as a good bunter.
Betts remembered how he had asked Rojas when to run the wheel play.
“In a do-or-die situation,” Rojas had told him.
So Betts took charge and put on the play.
“I don’t know if it was very comfortable, but somebody’s got to do it,” Betts said.
“I figured, if there was ever a good time to make a decision and roll with it, that was the time.”
Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy throws to third after fielding a bunt from Phillies second baseman Bryson Stott in the ninth inning in Game 2 of the NLDS on Monday.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
Muncy would charge and, if the ball was bunted to him, would throw to Betts covering third base. First baseman Freddie Freeman then said he would charge and, if the ball was not bunted to him, would cover second base so Stott could not advance there, since second baseman Tommy Edman would be covering first. Later, on his PItchCom, Vesia said he heard an order to cover second base.
“When Doc came out and made the pitching change, we talked to him about it and he was all on board,” Muncy said. “I am going to credit Mook. It was his idea.”
Said Betts: “That was one of times where Doc called on us and said, you guys figure it out — in a very positive way. And we did.”
Rojas called Betts “an extension of the manager on the field.”
Said Rojas: “I’m happy that he called it right there on the field. Because it was the right play with the right runner, knowing the guy was going to bunt.”
All of this speaks well of Betts’ intuition and intelligence, but the postseason is not the time for “trust the process” blather. The postseason is the time when the right call is the one that actually works.
For Stott or anyone else, Thomson said, a batter that sees the wheel play in motion should forget about the bunt and swing away, given the holes left by two infielders charging the plate and the other two rushing to cover a base.
Stott bunted.
The first problem for the Phillies was that they had no one available to pinch-run for Castellanos. Aside from a backup catcher, they had two position players left: Harrison Bader, playing with a sore groin, and Weston Wilson, whom the Phillies had to save to run for Bader.
The second problem for the Phillies was that the Dodgers had only run the wheel play once this season, so even the best advance scouts could not have been warning the Phillies to beware.
“It’s something we have under our sleeve,” Rojas said.
The third and most critical problem for the Phillies was that Betts had lingered close to second base, shadowing Castellanos. By the time Stott could have seen Betts take off for third, it was too late.
“Mookie did a great job of disguising the wheel play,” Thomson said.
Muncy fielded the ball cleanly, and Betts beat Castellanos to the bag by so much that Betts had time to drop his knee and block the bag before tagging out Castellanos, holding onto the ball even as Castellanos upended him.
“Those guys executed it to perfection,” Roberts said. “It was a lot tougher — they made it look a lot easier than it was. And for me, that was our only chance, really, to win that game in that moment.”
If Muncy did not field the ball cleanly or did not make a good throw, or if Betts did not beat Castellanos to the bag or tag him out, the Phillies would have had the tying run at third base and the winning run at first base with none out.
But they did not, which meant the ensuing single did not tie the score. Two batters later, the Dodgers had won.
The play would be difficult enough for a lifelong shortstop. Betts is in his first season as a full-time shortstop.
“It shows his intuition in the game,” Muncy said. “It’s second to none out there. It doesn’t matter what position you put that guy at — he knows what’s going on. It’s honestly really impressive.”
Said Ebel: “He’s obsessed with being a great player. And he’s still learning. He’s still going to get better. That’s the scary thing about it.”
As the Dodgers headed for a happy flight back to Los Angeles, Betts offered this game a five-star review.
“I’ll take off my Dodgers hat and just put on a fan hat,” he said. “I think that was a really dope baseball game.”
There was also an unfamiliar mental strain, as the former MVP slumped like he never had before.
There was a newfound process of having to flush such frustrations, forcing the 12-year veteran to accept failure, concede to a lost season, and reframe his mindset as the Dodgers approached the fall.
“I just accepted failing, so my thought process on failing changed,” Betts said in an introspective news conference on the eve of the playoffs.
“Instead of sulking on, ‘Well, I tried this and it failed, now I don’t know where to go,’ I just used it as positive things, and eventually turned.”
Betts’ full season, of course, will remain a disappointment. He posted personal low-marks in batting average (.258) and OPS (.732). He spent most of the summer with his confidence seemingly shot.
But from those depths has come a well-timed rebirth.
Amid a year of continuous turmoil, Betts finally found a way to mentally move on.
Over his final 47 games of the regular season, he batted .317 and nearly doubled his home run total, jumping from 11 on Aug. 4 to 20 by the end of the term.
During the Dodgers’ 15-5 finish to the schedule, he was one of the lineup’s hottest hitters, posting a .901 OPS that was second on the team only to Shohei Ohtani.
In the club’s wild-card-round sweep of the Cincinnati Reds, Betts’ production was even more prolific. He had six hits in the two games, including three doubles and three RBIs in the series clincher Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium.
And afterward, having helped the team book a spot in the National League Division Series against the Philadelphia Phillies, he reflected on his turbulent campaign again — attributing his recent success to the grind that came before it.
“I went through arguably one of the worst years of my career,” Betts said. “But I think it really made me mentally tough.”
All year, speculation swirled about the root causes of Betts’ struggles, which saw him miss the All-Star Game for the first time in a decade and bat as low as .231 through the first week of August.
His shortstop play was the most commonly blamed public culprit. The correlation, to many, seemed too obvious to ignore.
But this week, he finally granted some credence to the dynamic, putting the difficulties of the transition in a different, but connected, context.
“It’s hard to go back and forth,” he said of the balance between learning the fundamentals of shortstop while also trying to work through his offensive scuffles. “It’s a learned behavior going back [and forth] between offense and defense.”
This wasn’t a problem for Betts when he played right field, where he has six career Gold Glove awards.
“When I was in right, I didn’t have to do that,” Betts said. “I was just playing right. I didn’t have to think about it.”
At shortstop, on the other hand, he “had to think about everything,” from how to attack ground balls, to how to remake his throwing motion, to where to position himself for cutoff throws and relay plays.
“I was making errors I never made before,” Betts said. “I had never been in these situations.”
The Cincinnati Reds’ Spencer Steer is forced out at second base by Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts on a ground ball from Gavin Lux during the first inning of Game 2 of the National League Wild Card series on Wednesday.
(Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)
It hearkened back to something teammate Freddie Freeman said about Betts early in the season.
“It’s a lot to take on, to be a shortstop in the big leagues,” Freeman said in late May. “But once he gets everything under control, I think that’s when the hitting will pick right back up.”
Eventually, that prediction came true.
By the second half of the season, Betts finally stopped thinking his way through the shortstop position, and developed a comfort level that allowed him to simply play it.
“Now when I go out and play shortstop, it’s like I’m going out to right field,” Betts said. “I don’t even think about it. My training is good. I believe in myself. I believe in what I can do. And now it’s just like, go have fun.”
“Once short became where I didn’t have to think about it anymore,” he added, “I could really think about offense.”
Shortstop, of course, failed to explain the full extent of Betts’ hitting problems. Those started with the stomach virus he suffered at the beginning of the season, which wreaked havoc on his swing as much as his body.
Even after Betts regained the weight he lost, his strength remained diminished. It left his already underwhelming bat speed a tick lower than normal. It rendered his usual swing fixes ineffective as he battled mechanical flaws to which he struggled to find answers.
“It’s just hard to gain your weight and sustain strength in the middle of a season, when you’ve been traveling and doing all these things,” he said.
It felt like one domino kept bumping into the next. To the point where everything was on the verge of falling apart.
“My season’s kind of over,” Betts ultimately declared in early August. “We’re going to have to chalk [this] up for not a great season.”
That, though, is precisely when everything started to turn.
Moving forward, the 32-year-old decided then, he would commit himself to a new mindset: “I can go out and help the boys win every night,” he said. “Get an RBI, make a play, do something. I’m going to have to shift my focus there.”
Suddenly, where there was once only frustration, Betts started stacking one little victory after another. He would fist-pump sacrifice flies and ground balls that moved baserunners. He turned acrobatic plays on defense that refueled his once-dwindling confidence.
“When he kind of said that the year was lost, when he made that admission, that’s when I think it sort of flipped for him,” manager Dave Roberts said. “Just freeing his mind up.”
It helped that, down the stretch, Roberts committed to keeping Betts at shortstop; last year, the Dodgers shifted Betts to the outfield when he came back from injury in August.
“I take a lot of pride in it,” said Betts, who wound up leading all MLB shortstops in defensive runs saved this year. “At the start of the season, I wasn’t sure I would end the season there. I thought there may have to be an adjustment at some point, from lack of trust or whatever. I just didn’t know. So I’m just proud of myself for making it all the way through the year, and actually achieving a goal that I kind of set out to do: Being a major league shortstop, and say I did it and I’m good at it.”
His bat also started to gradually come around. Part of the reason was simple. “I was just able to finally get my strength back,” he said. But much of it was the result of hard work, with Betts spending long hours in the cage with not only the Dodgers’ hitting coaches, but former teammate and longtime swing confidant J.D. Martinez as well (who worked with Betts during both an August trip to Florida and a visit to Los Angeles for Betts’ charity pickleball tournament a few weeks later).
“I didn’t really have to try and add on power anymore,” Betts said. “I could just swing and let it do its thing.”
All of it amounted to one long process of Betts learning to move on. From his early physical ailments. From his persistent mental anguish. From a set of season-long challenges unlike any he’d previously endured.
“Slowly but surely,” Betts said, “started to get better and better.”
And now, entering Game 1 of the NLDS on Saturday, it has him back in a leading role for the Dodgers’ pursuit of a second straight World Series title: Starting at shortstop, swinging a hot bat, and having solved the mystery of a season that once looked lost.
“Better late than never,” he quipped Wednesday night. “It’s just one of those things where, you’ve just gotta keep going, man … So now, there’s just a different level of focus.”
A late scratch on Wednesday to catcher Will Smith, however, meant it would have to wait at least a couple more days.
Despite activating Tommy Edman from the injured list pregame, and proceeding to sweep the Colorado Rockies with a 9-0 win that stretched their National League West lead to three games, the Dodgers were left dealing with another injury headache Wednesday, removing Smith from the starting lineup just 15 minutes before first pitch after swelling developed around the bone bruise he has been dealing with in his right hand.
“Not overly concerned,” manager Dave Roberts said of Smith’s status, “but we’ve got to get that swelling under wraps.”
Smith’s absence hardly hampered the Dodgers in their fourth straight win.
Their lineup exploded for four runs in the second inning and five in the eighth behind a huge night from Mookie Betts, who continued his recent tear with a four-for-five, five-RBI performance that included a run-scoring double early and a grand slam to put things away late. Betts is now on a 16-game on-base streak, has multiple RBIs in five-straight contests, and is batting .352 with seven home runs and 26 RBIs over his last 32 games.
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ANGELS
Zach Neto hit a two-run homer, Mike Trout drove in two runs and the Angels beat the Minnesota Twins 4-3 on Wednesday.
Trout’s sacrifice fly in the eighth inning brought home Bryce Teodosio to give the Angels a 4-3 lead. Teodosio tripled off the top of the center-field wall, over the head of James Outman.
Trout also hit an RBI single in the third and scored on Neto’s homer off starter Taj Bradley to put the Angels ahead 3-1. It was Neto’s 26th home run of the year.
During the game’s first series, the lifelong fan saw No. 15 on the UCLA defense surge into the Nevada Las Vegas backfield. Morales wondered about the identity of this fast, feisty edge rusher and looked him up. It was Anthony Jones, a transfer from Michigan State.
Later, Morales watched No. 3 in coverage and commenced another search. It was defensive back Robert Stafford III, a transfer from Miami (Fla.).
Curious about the starting offensive linemen, Morales went back to his phone once more. He discovered a group that included three new starters in left tackle Courtland Ford and guards Eugene Brooks and Julian Armella — all transfers.
“I didn’t recognize any of the numbers,” Morales said.
Similar bewilderment was playing out in the San Diego living room of Ted Zeigler. Watching the game on his 65-inch television, the self-described hardcore Bruins fan also had the roster pulled up on his phone for ready reference, alternating between one screen and the other.
“This adds another dimension to watching the game that I wasn’t looking for,” Zeigler said. “I just feel disinterested.”
From Jad El Reda: The history of Mexican boxing features names that transcend generations. From Julio César Chávez, recognized as the pinnacle of Mexican boxing, to legendary figures such as Juan Manuel Márquez, Rubén ‘Púas’ Olivares, Salvador Sánchez, Ricardo ‘Finito’ López and Carlos ‘Cañas’ Zárate — all have proudly carried the name of Mexican flag to the peak of the boxing world.
The tradition of Aztec dominance has been continued in a big way by Saúl “Canelo” Álvarez, who on Oct. 29 will celebrate a historic 20-year professional career that began when he was just 15 years old, when he made his professional debut against Abraham González. Two decades later, with a legacy built on titles and big stages, Álvarez paused to reflect on his development from red-headed teenager who dreamed of being the best in the world to the current king of Mexican boxing with 63 victories.
Canelo Álvarez, left; UFC CEO Dana White, center; and Terence Crawford, right, speak during a news conference at at T-Mobile Arena on June 27. (David Becker / Getty Images for Netflix) “I’ve achieved everything in boxing, imagine how satisfying that is for me,” Álvarez told L.A. Times en Español during his training camp in Reno, Nev.
The celebration has already been planned and, like everything else involving Álvarez, it will be private but “on a grand scale.” The magnitude will likely depend on whether he emerges victorious when he defends his four belts against the undefeated Terence Crawford (41-0, 31 KOs) Saturday (6 p.m., Netflix), at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas.
1886 — The Mayflower defends the America’s Cup by beating Britain’s Galatea in two straight heats.
1937 — Don Budge beats Gottfried von Cramm in five sets to win his first U.S. Open men’s singles title. Budge wins 6-1, 7-9, 6-1, 3-6, 6-1.
1964 — ABC television cancels Fight of the Week, ending 18 years of regularly scheduled prime-time boxing on U.S. broadcast network television.
1976 — In the third race at Latonia, jockey John Oldham and his wife, Suzanne Picou, become the first husband and wife riding team to compete in a parimutuel race. Oldham finishes second aboard Harvey’s Hope and Picou rides My Girl Carla to an 11th-place finish.
1977 — In the last U.S. Open match played at the West Side Tennis Club in Forest Hills, New York, Guillermo Vilas beats Jimmy Connors, 2-6, 6-3, 7-6, 6-0, for the men’s singles title
1982 — Chris Evert wins her sixth U.S. Open singles title, defeating Hana Mandlikova, 6-3, 6-1.
1982 — In a 23-16 loss to Illinois, Rolf Mojsiejunko of Michigan State kicks a 61-yard field goal in his first collegiate attempt.
1983 — Pittsburgh running back Franco Harris runs for 118 yards in Steelers 25-21 win at Green Bay to become the only the third player in NFL history to rush for 11,000 yards.
1988 — Mats Wilander wins the longest men’s final in U.S. Open history, edging Ivan Lendl, 6-4, 4-6, 6-3, 5-7, 6-4.
1994 — Andre Agassi wins the U.S. Open with a three-set victory over Michael Stich and becomes the first unseeded player to beat five seeded players in a Grand Slam and the first unseeded champion since Fred Stolle in 1966. Andre wins 6-1, 7-6, 7-5.
1999 — U.S. Open Women’s Tennis: Serena Williams wins her first Grand Slam title; beats World #1 Martina Hingis 6-3, 7-6.
2001 — Sports comes to a standstill after terrorism in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania, with Major League Baseball postponing a full schedule of regular-season games for the first time since D-Day in 1944.
2010 — James Madison, a top team in the Football Championship Subdivision, beats No. 13 Virginia Tech 21-16. The last time Virginia Tech lost to a I-AA team was 1985, when Richmond beat the Hokies 24-14 at Lane Stadium.
2010 — The Penn State women’s volleyball team has its record winning streak ends at 109 matches with a 28-26, 25-12, 25-18 loss to Stanford in a tournament at Florida. Penn State’s streak is the second-longest in Division I team sports, behind the 137 straight wins by the Miami men’s tennis program from 1957-1964.
2011 — Carolina’s Cam Newton becomes the first rookie to throw for more than 400 yards in his NFL opener in a 28-21 loss to Arizona. Newton, the No. 1 draft pick playing on the same field where he led Auburn to the BCS championship in January, completes 24 of 37 passes for 422 yards and two touchdowns with one interception.
2015 — Roberta Vinci stuns Serena Williams to end her Grand Slam bid in one of the greatest upsets in tennis history. The 43rd-ranked Italian wins 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 in the U.S. Open semifinals.
THIS DAY IN BASEBALL HISTORY
1912 — Eddie Collins set a major league record with six stolen bases for the Philadelphia Athletics in a 9-7 win over the Detroit Tigers. Collins stole six more in a game on Sept. 22.
1918 — The Boston Red Sox beat the Chicago Cubs 2-1 behind the three-hit pitching of Carl Mays to win the World Series in six games. This was Boston’s third championship in a four-year stretch — 1915, 1916 and this season.
1936 — Hod Lisenbee of the Philadelphia A’s tied a major league record for hits allowed, giving up 26 in a 17-2 rout by the Chicago White Sox.
1949 — The New York Yankees sent 18 men to the plate in the third inning of the first game of a doubleheader against Washington. In the 50-minute half-inning the Senators walked a major-league record 11 batters as the Yankees went on to a 20-5 win. New York won the second game 2-1 in one hour and 22 minutes.
1959 — The Dodgers beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 5-4, putting an end to reliever Roy Face’s 22-game winning streak. It was his only loss of the season as he finished with an 18-1 record.
1974 — It took the St. Louis Cardinals 25 innings — seven hours, four minutes — to beat the New York Mets. A record 202 batters went to the plate, Felix Millan and John Milner had 12 appearances apiece.
1985 — Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds became the all-time hit leader with his 4,192nd hit to break Ty Cobb’s record. Rose lined a 2-1 pitch off San Diego pitcher Eric Show to left-center field for a single in the first inning. It was the 57th anniversary of Ty Cobb’s last game in the majors.
1987 — New York Mets third baseman Howard Johnson, with 34 homers, became the first National League infielder to reach 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases in the same season. His 30th stolen base came in the fourth inning of a 6-4, 10-inning loss to the St. Louis Cardinals.
1996 — San Diego’s Ken Caminiti broke his own major league record by homering from both sides of the plate in a game for the fourth time this season. In a 6-5 win over Pittsburgh, Caminiti homered left-handed in the fifth inning, hitting a two-run shot. Batting right-handed in the seventh, he hit a solo shot to break his record set last year.
2008 — Albert Pujols drove in his 100th run with a sixth-inning double in the Cardinals’ 3-2 loss to the Cubs, becoming only the third player in major league history to reach the milestone in his first eight seasons. Pujols also extended his major league-record streak of reaching 30 homers and 100 RBIs in his first eight seasons, two more than any player in history.
2014 — Miami Marlins slugger Giancarlo Stanton sustained multiple facial fractures, dental damage and cuts that needed stitches after being hit in the face by a pitch. Stanton was hit under the left eye by a fastball from Milwaukee’s Mike Fiers in the fifth inning of a 4-2 loss.
2021 — Corbin Burnes and Josh Hader of the Milwaukee Brewers throw a combined no-hitter to beat the Cleveland Indians 3-0. It was the record ninth no-hitter of the season.
Compiled by the Associated Press
Until next time…
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Betts is the Dodgers’ shortstop now, Betts will be the Dodgers’ shortstop next week, and Betts will be the Dodgers’ shortstop in the postseason.
The only times Roberts said he envisioned Betts returning to right field was late in games in which the Dodgers ran out of bench players. A situation like that came up a few weeks ago in a game against the Angels. Miguel Rojas, an infielder, was deployed as a pinch hitter in the top of the eighth inning and remained in the game at shortstop. Betts defended right field for an inning.
Roberts isn’t sticking with Betts at shortstop because of their close relationship. He’s sticking with Betts at shortstop because of how Betts has played the position.
Betts entered his team’s weekend series against the Arizona Diamondbacks leading all major league shortstops in defensive runs saved (15).
He was ninth in outs above average (four).
He was also fifth in fielding percentage (.985).
“When you’re talking about shortstop play, you’re looking for consistency, and I’ve just loved the consistency,” Roberts said. “He’s made every play he’s supposed to make, and then the last couple weeks, he’s made spectacular plays. He’s been a big part of preventing runs. “
Roberts is equally, if not more, encouraged by how Betts has looked.
“Right now, it’s all instinct instead of the technical part of it, how to do this or that,” Roberts said. “I think he’s free to just be a major league shortstop. I truly, to this day, have never seen a position change like Mookie has.”
Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts throws to first base after forcing out Padres baserunner Freddy Fermin at second on Aug. 15.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
A six-time Gold Glove Award winner as a right fielder, Betts moved to shortstop late in spring training last year when it became evident the team didn’t have an everyday player at the position. The last time he spent significant time at shortstop was in high school.
By mid-June, Betts was about a league-average shortstop but further progress was derailed by a broken hand that landed him on the injured list. When Betts was activated a couple of months later, he returned as a right fielder. He remained there throughout the Dodgers’ World Series run.
However, Betts was determined to take another shot at playing shortstop. Unlike the previous year, he was able to train at this position over the offseason, working with Dodgers coaches and former All-Star shortstop Troy Tulowitzki. The preparation has made a noticeable difference.
Betts has improved to where he now feels comfortable dispensing advice on how to play the position, regularly offering pointers to rookie infielder Alex Freeland.
“It’s the smallest details,” Freeland said. “I give him so much credit because he makes the small things matter the most because a lot of those smaller details go overlooked by a lot of players where they’re like, ‘Oh, we don’t need to focus on that, something so minute, it’s not going to matter.’ But Mookie takes all the small details and makes them very important.”
Roberts expected this of Betts, whom he considers one of the team’s leaders alongside Freddie Freeman and Clayton Kershaw. He pointed to how Betts has carried himself in the worst offensive season of his career, his relentless work resulting in him batting .329 over the last three weeks.
“I love how Mookie is always accountable,” Roberts said. “There’s been times where he’s been really good and times he hasn’t but he’s never run from having the conversation or owning the fact that he’s underperforming. His work has never wavered. So for me, that’s something that when you’re talking about one of the leaders in your clubhouse, it really resonates with everyone, coaches included. I’m always going to bet on him.”
So much so that Roberts has wagered the season on him.
Mookie Betts is his shortstop — now, next week and in the postseason.
DENVER — Mookie Betts was back at shortstop and Teoscar Hernández remained in right field for the Dodgers on Tuesday, a day after two questionable fielding plays in the outfield led to two runs in a 4-3 walk-off loss to the last-place Colorado Rockies.
Hernández’s defense has increasingly become a matter of concern for manager Dave Roberts and Monday’s loss was followed by a meeting involving Roberts; Andrew Friedman, the Dodgers president of baseball operations; and Betts, who has expressed a willingness to move back to right field where he was a six-time Gold Glove winner.
Hernández is ranked 64th among National League right fielders with a defensive WAR of -0.4 and his two errors are tied for fourth-most in the league.
“He’s got to get better out there. There’s just no way to put it,” Roberts said after Monday’s game of Hernández. “It’s not a lack of effort. But, you know, we’ve just got to kind of get better. We do.”
Betts, meanwhile, twice led the American League in fielding average and putouts as the Boston Red Sox’s right fielder. But he’s played shortstop full-time this season.
“Defense is a big part of postseason baseball and winning baseball,” Roberts said.
Betts’ move to the infield has arguably weakened the Dodgers in two ways: Hernández’s defense and Betts’ offense. Playing the infield, especially shortstop, is far more taxing mentally than playing in the outfield and Betts is slashing a career-low .242/.312/.370 this season.
Moving Betts back to right field would likely mean using Alex Freeland or Miguel Rojas at shortstop, at least in the short term. Freeland played nearly 300 games at shortstop in the minors while Rojas has played more than 940 games there in the majors.
Hernández, second on the team with 74 RBIs and tied for second with 20 home runs, would then move to left field — a less-demanding position defensively than right field — in place of Michael Conforto, whose .190 batting average is the worst in the majors among players with at least 300 at-bats.
Moving Betts back to the outfield could be easier for Roberts when utility players Tommy Edman, Hyeseong Kim and Kiké Hernández return from the injured list, giving the manager more depth and flexibility. Kim, who will begin a rehab assignment this week, is the furthest along and could be back by early next week.
From Jack Harris: It was a sight that’s been all too rare this season, coming precisely when the Dodgers needed it most.
Mookie Betts, bat in hand, game on the line. A swing as smooth as it was strong, his two-handed finish sending the ball out of sight.
For so much of this year, the Dodgers have been picking Betts up amid a career-worst season at the plate.
On Sunday afternoon, with a rivalry game and division lead hanging in the balance, he returned the favor with his biggest moment in what felt like ages.
After once leading by four, then watching the San Diego Padres claw back to tie the score, the Dodgers completed a weekend series sweep on Betts’ go-ahead home run in the eighth.
The no-doubt, 394-foot, stadium-shaking blast sent the Dodgers to a 5-4 win and gave them a two-game lead in the National League West; and had Betts skipping around the bases with a swagger that has been missing for much of the campaign.
“It’s been a long time,” Betts said — since he had delivered such a clutch hit, looked so much like his old self at the dish, and trusted a swing that has frustrated him since the earliest days of the season.
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ANGELS
Jo Adell hit a three-run homer in the first inning and kicked off a six-run tenth with an RBI single as the Angels beat the Athletics 11-5 on Sunday to avoid a three-game sweep.
Kenley Jansen (5-2) struck out two in a scoreless ninth to give him 1,268 for his career, the fourth-most strikeouts by a reliever in major league history.
In the 10th, automatic runner Mike Trout advanced to third on a passed ball, Taylor Ward walked and Adell lined a single to center against Michael Kelly (2-2) to make it 6-5. Christian Moore drove in his third run of the game with a grounder and Luis Rengifo followed with a two-run triple off Ben Bowden. Bryce Tedosio added a sacrifice fly and Zach Neto capped the scoring with a 436-foot homer to left-center, his 21st.
From Ben Bolch: There were some breakdowns before UCLA broke training camp.
Don’t worry, these were the poignant, bring-everyone-together kind.
As part of coach DeShaun Foster’s efforts to connect a team featuring 55 new players and eight new assistant coaches, everyone participated in a series of brotherhood meetings over the last two weeks at the team hotel in Costa Mesa.
Coaches stood before the entire team, sharing anecdotes about their experiences in the game. Players told their stories in more intimate position-group settings run by a coach from a different position.
“A lot of tears,” Foster said Saturday before his team’s final camp session. “So I just like that the players were being vulnerable and letting their guard down because they saw the coaches do it. So, you know, I just think that really brought us together and we’re gonna see if it worked.”
From Ira Gorawara: Kristen Nuss was covered in sand, dulling her neon two-piece swimsuit. A white lei hung around her neck as she attempted to balance her champion’s plaque awkwardly in one hand.
“This thing is heavy,” she said, “my arm is getting sore.”
Despite her and partner Taryn Brasher repeating as AVP Manhattan Beach Open champions — grinding out a 15-21, 21-18, 15-13 victory over former USC standouts Megan Kraft and Terese Cannon — on Sunday, the weight of both the hardware and the title wasn’t lost on Nuss.
“This is Wimbledon,” Nuss said. “It’s the granddaddy of them all. My mom always said she wanted me to play at Wimbledon. … This is definitely one of the most coveted trophies right here.”
From Jad El Reda: Her name was etched in the memory of millions thanks to her role as Gabrielle Solís in “Desperate Housewives,” a series that established Eva Longoria as one of the most influential Latina actresses in Hollywood.
She went on to become a producer, director, entrepreneur, activist and, in recent years, an investor in the world of sports, where she has earned the nickname “La Patrona” — or “The Boss” in English — which easily could be the title of a Mexican soap opera.
After more than two decades of credits and awards earned in the entertainment industry, Longoria has shifted her focus. Today, her role as “La Patrona” of Liga MX team Club Necaxa draws on her family’s roots, her passion for storytelling and her commitment to giving Mexico visibility in the world.
Her involvement was not limited to serving on Necaxa’s board of directors as a celebrity investor. From the beginning, she knew she wanted to tell a story. Inspired by Rob McElhenney and Ryan Reynolds’ “Welcome to Wrexham” docuseries, she decided to produce the the docuseries “Necaxa,” which premiered on Aug. 7 on FX. Cameras take viewers behind the scenes, follow along on road trips and offer an intimate look at the soccer team.
Few could have imagined a Mexican American actress would become the leading front office voice for a historic Mexican soccer club, whose home stadium — Estadio Victoria — is located in the city of Aguascalientes in north-central Mexico.
Sonia Citron tied her career high with five three-pointers and finished with 24 points, Kiki Iriafen added 18 points and 10 rebounds and the Washington Mystics beat the Sparks 95-86 on Sunday.
Iriafen has 12 double-doubles this season and set a franchise rookie record for most games (six) with at least 15 points and 10-plus rebounds.
Shakira Austin had 14 points and Jade Melbourne, who fouled out with less than two minutes left, scored 11 for Washington (16-18).
1923 — Helen Mills, 17, ends Molla Bjurstedt Mallory’s domination of the U.S. Lawn Tennis Association championships and starts her own with a 6-2, 6-1 victory.
1958 — Floyd Patterson knocks out Roy Harris in the 13th round at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles to retain his world heavyweight title.
1964 — The International Olympic Committee bans South Africa from competing in the Summer Olympics because of its apartheid policies.
1994 — South Africa is introduced for the first time in 36 years during the opening ceremonies of the 15th Commonwealth Games held in Victoria, British Columbia. South Africa had been banned from the Games since 1958 because of its apartheid policies.
1995 — Thirteen-year-old Dominique Moceanu becomes the youngest to win the National Gymnastics Championships senior women’s all-around title in New Orleans.
2004 — Paul Hamm wins the men’s gymnastics all-around Olympic gold medal by the closest margin ever in the event. Controversy follows after it was discovered a scoring error that may have cost Yang Tae-young of South Korea the men’s all-around title. Yang, who finished with a bronze, is wrongly docked a tenth of a point on his second-to-last routine, the parallel bars. He finishes third, 0.049 points behind Hamm, who becomes the first American man to win gymnastics’ biggest prize.
2008 — A day after winning an Olympic gold medal in Beijing, Rafael Nadal officially unseats Roger Federer to become the world’s No. 1 tennis player when the ATP rankings are released. Federer had been atop the rankings for 235 weeks.
2013 — For the first time in Solheim Cup history, the Europeans leave America with the trophy. Caroline Hedwall becomes the first player in the 23-year history of the event to win all five matches. She finishes with a 1-up victory over Michelle Wie and gives Europe the 14 points it needed to retain the cup.
2013 — Usain Bolt is perfect again with three gold medals. The Jamaican great becomes the most successful athlete in the 30-year history of the world championships. The 4×100-meter relay gold erases the memories of the 100 title he missed out on in South Korea two years ago because of a false start. Bolt, who already won the 100 and 200 meters, gets his second such sprint triple at the world championships, matching the two he achieved at the Olympics.
2016 — Jamaica’s Usain Bolt completes an unprecedented third consecutive sweep of the 100 and 200-meter sprints, elevating his status as the most decorated male sprinter in Olympic history. He wins the 200-meter race with a time of 19.78 seconds to defeat Andre de Grasse of Canada. American Ashton Eaton defends his Olympic decathlon title, equaling the games record with a surge on the last lap of the 1,500 meters — the last event in the two-day competition. Helen Maroulis defeats Japan’s Saori Yoshida 4-1 in the 53-kilogram freestyle final to win the first-ever gold medal for a United States women’s wrestler.
2018 — Accelerate cruises to a record 12 1/2-length victory in the $1-million Pacific Classic at Del Mar, becoming just the third horse to sweep all three of Southern California’s major races for older horses in the same year.
THIS DAY IN BASEBALL HISTORY
1915 — Boston opened Braves Field with a 3-1 victory over the St. Louis Cardinals.
1931 — New York’s Lou Gehrig played in his 1,000th consecutive game. Gehrig went hitless in the 5-4 loss to Detroit.
1948 — Brooklyn’s Rex Barney pitched a one-hitter for a 1-0 win over Robin Roberts and the Philadelphia Phillies at Shibe Park.
1956 — The Cincinnati Reds hit eight home runs and the Milwaukee Braves added two to set a National League record for home runs by two clubs in a nine-inning night game. Bob Thurman’s three homers and double led the Reds in the 13-4 rout.
1960 — Lew Burdette of the Milwaukee Braves pitched a no-hitter, beating the Philadelphia Phillies 1-0. Burdette faced the minimum 27 batters.
1965 — Hank Aaron of Milwaukee hit Curt Simmons’ pitch on top of the pavilion roof at Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis for an apparent home run. However, umpire Chris Pelekoudas called him out for being out of the batter’s box when he connected. Nevertheless, the Braves won the game 5-3.
1967 — California’s Jack Hamilton hit Tony Conigliaro on his left cheekbone with a fastball in the fourth inning of a 3-2 loss to Boston. Conigliaro was carried unconscious from the field and missed the remainder of the 1967 season and the entire 1968 season. The 22-year-old already had more than 100 home runs.
1977 — Don Sutton of the Dodgers pitched his fifth one-hitter to tie the National League record. Sutton gave up a two-out single in the eighth inning to San Francisco’s Marc Hill. The Dodgers won 7-0.
1995 — Tom Henke became the seventh pitcher to reach 300 career saves, surviving a rally by the Atlanta Braves in the ninth inning of the St. Louis Cardinals’ 4-3 victory.
2000 — Darin Erstad of the Angels made a spectacular, game-saving catch in the 10th inning and followed it with a homer in the 11th as the Angels defeated the New York Yankees 9-8.
2006 — Alfonso Soriano became the third player in major league history to have at least four seasons of 30 homers and 30 stolen bases, and the Washington Nationals beat the Philadelphia Phillies 6-4.
2007 — Micah Owings went 4-for-5, including a pair of mammoth homers, drove in six runs and scored four times while pitching three-hit ball through seven innings as the Arizona Diamondbacks beat the Atlanta Braves 12-6.
2011 — Mike Jacobs became the first player suspended by Major League Baseball for a positive HGH test under the sport’s minor league drug testing procedures. The 30-year-old minor league first baseman, who was in the big leagues from 2005-10, received a 50-game suspension for taking the banned performance-enhancing substance and was subsequently released by the Colorado Rockies.
2017 — Manny Machado capped a three-homer night with a grand slam in the bottom of the ninth inning, and the Baltimore Orioles rallied past the Angels 9-7 in a game that featured 10 home runs.
2018 — New York Mets ace Jacob deGrom pitched his first complete game of the season and lowered his major league-leading ERA to 1.71 with a 3-1 win over the Philadelphia Phillies.
2019 — Zack Grenke records the 200th win of his career as the Astros defeat the Athletics 4-1.
2021 — Shohei Ohtani continues to do it all by himself on the field. Today, he becomes the first hitter in the majors to reach 40 homers this season, and also improves his record on the mound to 8-1 as he pitches 8 full innings for the first time of his career. The Angels defeat the Tigers, 3-1.
2021 — Atlanta Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman hit for the cycle for the second time in his career as they beat the Miami Marlins 11-9.
Compiled by the Associated Press
Until next time…
That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at [email protected]. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
It was a sight that’s been all too rare this season, coming precisely when the Dodgers needed it most.
Mookie Betts, bat in hand, game on the line. A swing as smooth as it was strong, his two-handed finish sending the ball out of sight.
For so much of this year, the Dodgers have been picking Betts up amid a career-worst season at the plate.
On Sunday afternoon, with a rivalry game and division lead hanging in the balance, he returned the favor with his biggest moment in what felt like ages.
After once leading by four, then watching the San Diego Padres claw back to tie the score, the Dodgers completed a weekend series sweep on Betts’ go-ahead home run in the eighth.
The no-doubt, 394-foot, stadium-shaking blast sent the Dodgers to a 5-4 win and gave them a two-game lead in the National League West; and had Betts skipping around the bases with a swagger that has been missing for much of the campaign.
“It’s been a long time,” Betts said — since he had delivered such a clutch hit, looked so much like his old self at the dish, and trusted a swing that has frustrated him since the earliest days of the season.
“Finally, I did something good for the boys that’s with the bat. I feel like I’ve done a decent job with the glove. But the bat, I haven’t really been able to help much. So just good to help with that.”
Mookie Betts hits a solo home run for the Dodgers in eighth inning Sunday against the Padres.
As Betts came to the plate in the eighth, Dodger Stadium stood still in a silent, tense trance.
In the first inning, the team had ambushed Padres starter Yu Darvish for four runs on long balls from Freddie Freeman and Andy Pages.
But from there, a crowd of 49,189 watched the Padres slowly come back.
Tyler Glasnow fizzled after two electric opening innings, leaving the game at the end of the fifth after allowing two runs.
A patchwork Dodgers bullpen couldn’t hold off the Padres, giving up runs in the top of the sixth and eighth to make it a 4-4 game.
At that point, San Diego had the advantage. Their league-best bullpen was fresh. Their closer, Robert Suarez, was on the mound. And the Dodgers were almost completely out of pitching options, having burned five relievers to get the previous nine outs.
But then, Betts delivered. In a 2-and-0 count against Suarez, he launched a center-cut fastball deep into the left-field stands.
“To get into a good count and turn that fastball around, that’s the Mookie we like,” manager Dave Roberts said.
“He was able to stay through it, back-spin the ball, hit it over the fence in a big situation,” Freeman echoed. “Been saying it the last few weeks. Mookie Betts is gonna be Mookie Betts. No one here is worried about him.”
That might have been true of his teammates. But for much of the summer, Betts seemed to be battling constant self-doubt.
His swing never felt right, off from the start after a late-spring stomach virus that zapped him of almost 20 pounds. His typical production never materialized, with a lack of power or consistent on-base ability contributing to distant career-lows in batting average (.242), OPS (.683) and home runs (he is on pace for only 17).
“I don’t know how to get through this,” Betts said last month. “I’m working every day. Hopefully it turns.”
When mechanical tweaks and long-trusted swing cues didn’t fix the issue, Betts recently decided to adopt a new mindset.
At the behest of Roberts, and the encouragement of his wife Brianna, Betts began this month by reframing his perspective.
“We’re going to have to chalk [this] up [as] not a great season,” Betts said two weeks ago, at least as far as his overall numbers were concerned. “But I can go out and help the boys win every night. Get an RBI. Make a play. Do something. I’m going to have to shift my focus there.”
Of late, the shift seemed to be working.
From Aug. 5-13, he went 14 for 35 over an eight-game hitting streak with seven RBIs, three extra-base hits and only two strikeouts.
This weekend had been more of a struggle, with Betts going hitless in his first nine at-bats.
But when he came up in the eighth, he had mental clarity. He wasn’t worried about his numbers, or a statline long past saving.
“Just trying to do something productive,” he said. “It definitely helps to not carry burdens from previous at-bats.”
Mookie Betts runs the bases after hitting a solo home run in the eighth inning for the Dodgers against the Padres on Sunday.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
As the ball sailed out, landing in a left-field pavilion of rollicking fans, Betts practically floated around the bases, giving a two-handed wave to the bullpen, the team’s Shohei Ohtani-inspired finger swoosh to the dugout, and a couple emphatic salutes to both teammates and the crowd.
“To take the pressure off — trying to recover from the season and get more micro, just game to game, at-bat to at-bat — it’s a better quality of life,” Roberts said. “Certainly, we’re seeing the performance from Mookie.”
And as a result, the Dodgers (71-53) had a triumphant ending to their pivotal rivalry series sweep of the Padres (69-55), going from second place Friday to all alone in first again.
“We just played a good brand of baseball this weekend,” Betts said. “But again, we still got a long way to go.”
Long before the dramatic ending, Sunday had started like the previous two games. The Dodgers were getting good pitching, with Glasnow striking out four of his first five batters while pumping increased fastball velocity and generating foolish swings with his slider. The Padres were making mistakes; most notably, Freddy Fermín getting gunned down by Pages from center while trying to leg out a double in the top of the third, turning what could have been a crooked-number rally into only a one-run inning.
Darvish, meanwhile, made a pair of two-strike mistakes in the first, leaving a fastball up to Freeman for a three-run homer before failing to bury a splitter to Pages for a solo shot.
It all seemed to give the Dodgers full control of the series finale.
In the top of the fifth, however, things began to shift.
Dodgers starting pitcher Tyler Glasnow delivers in the first inning against the Padres on Sunday.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
First, Ramón Laureano lifted a solo drive just over the wall in right to lead off the inning. And though Glasnow got out of a jam later in the inning, his fading command and rising 91-throw pitch count prompted Roberts to go to the bullpen with still 12 outs to go.
In the sixth, Anthony Banda gave up one run on a pair of doubles (the second one, a floating fly ball into the right-field corner from Ryan O’Hearn that slow-footed Teoscar Hernández couldn’t track down).
And though Blake Treinen stranded a runner at third in the seventh — thanks in no small part to a generous strike call against Manny Machado that negated a walk — more trouble arose in the eighth, after Alexis Díaz started by hitting a batter and giving up a double to Laureano on a line drive to center.
“Man, fought our tail off to come back,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said. “Could have easily said, you know what, it’s not our day again, down four.”
Tying the game, however, was as close as the Padres would get.
Facing the two-on, one-out jam, Roberts summoned Alex Vesia to try and get out of the inning. The left-hander retired both batters he faced, with only a ground ball from Jose Iglesias managing to level the score.
Dodgers reliever Alex Vesia, right, celebrates with catcher Will Smith after the Dodgers’ 5-4 win over the Padres at Dodger Stadium on Sunday.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
When Vesia returned to the dugout, Roberts phoned to the bullpen, instructing Justin Wrobleski to get loose with the game veering toward extras.
Vesia, however, had a different plan in mind.
“They told me I was done. And I was just like, ‘No,’” Vesia declared. “So I told Doc, I walked up to him and said, ‘Hey, if we’re up [in the ninth], I want it.’ He was like, ‘OK, you got it.’ Sure enough, Mook, bang, homers. Sweet, let’s go.”
Indeed, just when it seemed like all the momentum the Dodgers had built this weekend was suddenly fading, and the series would end with them only tied atop the standings, Betts instead flipped the script with his moment of salvation. Then Vesia returned to the mound for a clean ninth inning — punctuated by a strikeout of Machado that left him one for 11 in the series.
“To really weather the last couple innings, and to get that big hit off a really good closer was big,” Roberts said. “Yeah, feel a lot better today than a week ago.”
The announcement could not have been more unfortunately timed. On the morning after the Dodgers had been swept by the Angels and fallen out of first place in the National League West for the first time in 108 days, the email to media members started this way: “Ever wonder how a player like Mookie Betts gets in the zone for the MLB Postseason?”
This is not on Betts, not at all. He is simply the front man for a campaign in which Corona Beer and its advertising partners had pre-timed an otherwise harmless press release for 6 a.m. PT Thursday. The headline on the press release: “Corona Teams Up with Mookie Betts to Bring the Beach to the Ballpark Through a First-of-its-Kind Soundtrack for the MLB Postseason.”
One of the keys to Betts’ success: an even keel that sometimes frustrates fans who want every player on their team to be as visibly frustrated as they are. In the aftermath of the Angels’ sweep, this is what Betts said Wednesday night: “It is what it is. Can’t change it right now.”
The promotional photo distributed with the press release shows Betts relaxing on a beach towel, next to home plate, headphones on. The soundtrack “fuses the iconic sounds of the ballpark with the relaxing vibe of the beach.”
Betts helped to pick seven minutes and 54 seconds of “home run blasts, in-stadium crowd waves and announcer calls from his most memorable postseason moments … combined with ambient ocean breezes and crashing waves.”
The Dodgers’ Mookie Betts teamed up with Corona for a baseball-themed soundtrack campaign called “Playa Sounds.”
(Corona)
You can hear the soundtrack here. From the press release: “The entire mix is tuned at 432hz — a frequency commonly associated with enhanced clarity.”
“As a player, you need to be in the right head space to show up when the lights are brightest,” Betts said in the press release. “I worked with Corona to make sure this soundtrack accurately captures the energy of the postseason and channels that into something both the guys in the dugout and fans can use to prepare for the season’s biggest upcoming moments.”
In last year’s postseason, Betts batted .290, hitting four home runs and scoring 14 runs in 16 games. After the World Series, on an episode of his podcast, he and several teammates broke down the Dodgers’ championship run, including a discussion of the New York Yankees’ fundamental flaws in the World Series.
Hi, and welcome to another edition of Dodgers Dugout. My name is Houston Mitchell. My third grandchild, Paisley, was born this week. Things like that give Brock Stewart pitching poorly the proper perspective.
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The Dodgers season was going along just fine. We had grown accustomed to the pitching doing poorly, and being injured, and were just waiting for the start of the postseason. But, no, the Dodgers had to thrown in a new wrinkle: The offense is now terrible too.
So what has happened to the offense? Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernández stopped hitting. Max Muncy was injured. It seemed that only Will Smith could still get the key hits when needed.
Let’s take a look at the team’s hitting in July:
Alex Freeland, 1 for 2 Will Smith, .349/.461/.587, 22 for 63, 3 doubles, 4 homers, 7 RBIs, 12 walks, 15 K’s Michael Conforto, .273/.342/.485, 18 for 66, 5 doubles, 3 homers, 7 RBIs, 6 walks, 15 K’s Freddie Freeman, .253/.327/.352, 23 for 91, 6 doubles, 1 homer, 13 RBIs, 9 walks, 32 K’s Miguel Rojas, .250/.361/.481, 13 for 52, 3 doubles, 3 homers, 5 RBIs, 9 walks, 9 K’s Andy Pages, .247/.299/.382, 22 for 89, 3 doubles, 3 homers, 9 RBIs, 6 walks, 26 K’s Teoscar Hernández, .232/.284/.362, 3 doubles, 2 homers, 11 RBIs, 5 walks, 20 K’s Mookie Betts, .205/.261/.325, 17 for 83, 4 doubles, 2 homers, 5 RBIs, 6 walks, 14 K’s Shohei Ohtani, .204/.321/.505, 19 for 93, 1 double, 9 homers, 19 RBIs, 16 walks, 32 K’s Hyeseong Kim, .193/.207/.211, 11 for 57, 1 double, 3 RBIs, 1 walk, 24 K’s Esteury Ruiz, .190/.261/.333, 4 for 21, 1 homer, 2 RBIs, 2 walks, 8 K’s Dalton Rushing, .179/.200/.214, 5 for 28, 1 double, 2 RBIs, 8 K’s Tommy Edman, .156/.239/.230, 2 homers, 6 RBIs, 5 walks, 15 K’s James Outman, .067/.176/.133, 1 for 15, 1 double, 1 walk, 5 K’s Max Muncy, 0 for 5 Kiké Hernández, 0 for 9 Team, .226/.302/.375, 31 doubles, 30 homers, 80 walks, 226 K’s, 3.79 runs per game
That’s pretty brutal (however, note how well Conforto has been hitting for over a month now). Let’s look at the team rankings in July among the 30 MLB teams:
They were last in doubles and triples, 15th in home runs.
Things have picked up slightly in August. Freeman is hitting .458 with power, Ohtani is hitting .400, Teoscar is hitting .250 with power. The only one still not hitting is Betts, who is hitting .174 in August. They are only 3-3 in August and are 13-17 over their last 30 games.
Betts is having the worst season of his career, and it’s not even close. Let’s look at his OPS+ each season (remember, OPS+ compares a hitter to the league average. An OPS+ of 120 means the hitters is 20% better than league average, an OPS+ of 80 means they were 30% worse.
His best season, 2018, was the year he won AL MVP with the Red Sox.
With the move to shortstop, the Dodgers have gone from having a perennial Gold Glove and MVP candidate in right field, to an average (at best) fielding, below-average hitter at shortstop. I checked at Baseball Reference, and looked for Dodgers shortstops who had a career OPS+ near 85 and similar fielding stats. The answer: Greg Gagne and Bill Russell.
And, when you think about it, Betts is playing about the same as Russell did, only 50 years later in a much different game.
Betts talked to Times columnist Dylan Hernández before and after Tuesday’s game, and had some interesting quotes. Betts said it wasn’t the position switch or the illness just as the season began that triggered his slump. It started when Betts broke his left hand in June last season.
“I really haven’t been right since I came back from my hand last year,” Betts said. “Think about it. Go and look at it. I haven’t been right since.”
OK, so let’s look at it.
Before his hand was broken, Betts was hitting .304/.405/.488 last season. After that, he hit .263/.314/.497. Lower average, a lot fewer walks, but more power. He hit .290 in the postseason with five doubles and four homers.
Then there’s this season, where he has fallen off a cliff.
There was hope Tuesday when Betts went three for four. But that came on the heels of an 0 for 20 skid, and he followed it up by going one for four Wednesday as the Dodgers lost two of three from the Cardinals.
Betts has continued to work hard to improve, taking extra batting practice and doing anything and everything to get better, so the effort is not in question. And it’s hard to think of a player who was at the level Betts played at who just stopped hitting all of a sudden. There’s usually a gradual decline. Adrián González stopped hitting suddenly, but he wasn’t quite at Betts’ level, and the shift played into that some.
But here’s the thing. When the Dodgers moved Ohtani to the leadoff spot, the reasoning was they wanted to give their best hitter the most at bats. Some didn’t like it, but they won a World Series with Ohtani leading off.
Betts had a .314 on-base percentage last season after his hand was broken. He has a .308 on-base percentage this season. He is batting second. That is not giving the most at bats to your best hitters. It’s time to move Betts down to the bottom half of the order. Dave Roberts isn’t going to do that, but it’s time. For a full season now, Betts’ on-base percentage has been subpar. One of the jobs of your top two hitters is to get on base. And maybe Betts will relax a little lower in the order. Who knows. We’re not in the Dodgers clubhouse every day to get an emotional read on everyone. Maybe moving Betts down would destroy his confidence. I can’t speak intelligently as to those things. But on paper, he needs to move down to sixth or seventh. Maybe try Alex Call in the two spot against lefties. He has a .371 on-base percentage this season and is a guy GM Brandon Gomes called “a grinder.” He works the count. The Dodgers have fallen out of the habit of doing that. Maybe a fresh look at the top of the lineup will get things going again.
Because one thing is for sure. The Padres are looming large in the rear-view mirror. I still believe the Dodgers will make the postseason, but better to do it as a division winner than a wild-card.
But, despite this brutal, no-good, very bad season, keep in mind an important fact:
Last season at this time, the Dodgers were 66-49 and had a three-game lead over San Diego and Arizona in the NL West. They had just gone 11-13 in July and were 3-3 in August at that time. Some readers and fans online were saying this team would never win the World Series.
This season, the Dodgers are 66-49 and have a two-game lead over San Diego in the NL West. They have just gone 10-14 in July and are 3-3 in August. Some readers and fans online are saying this team will never win the World Series.
Check out what Jack Harris has to say about the offense by clicking here.
Notes
—Ohtani got his 1,000th major league hit on Wednesday. 1,405 players have reached the 1,000-hit mark. Remember Amed Rosario, whom the Dodgers acquired via trade twice in the last couple of seasons and then cut loose relatively quickly? He has 1,001 hits (in 100 more at bats).
—Ohtani is on pace for 55 home runs this season, one more than he hit last year. However, he has only 16 steals, compared to 59 last year. That’s what pitching will do. Have to protect those legs.
—Readers ask why Ohtani is striking out so much. Compared to his career norms, he really isn’t (a 1.2% increase). However last season, a magical season for him, was his career low in strikeouts, making this season seem worse than it is. His career high is 189, in 2021 with the Angels. He’s on pace to strike out 192 times this season, but in 100 more plate appearances than in 2021.
—Brock Stewart has given up two runs in 2-2/3 innings with the Dodgers. Apparently they accidentally acquired the 2019 Stewart.
—Roki Sasaki has a three-inning simulated game Friday, after which he could go out on a minor-league rehab assignment.
—The Giants released former Dodgers catcher Austin Barnes, who went eight for 39 (.205) in the minors with them.
—Dustin May made his first start for the Red Sox on Wednesday, giving up three runs in 3-2/3 innings of a loss.
—Max Muncy hit two homers Tuesday, his 19th multi-homer game with the Dodgers, tying him for the most in L.A. Dodgers history with Mike Piazza.
—Muncy has 205 home runs with the Dodgers, fourth in L.A. history behind Eric Karros (270), Ron Cey (228) and Steve Garvey (211). He’s still well off the franchise record, held by Duke Snider (389).
—As far as position player injuries go, Hyeseong Kim could be back soon, while the return date for Tommy Edman and Kiké Hernández remains murky.
—Only 20 pitchers have struck out at least 3,000 batters. Two of them, Max Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw, start against each other Friday. You have to appreciate these moments when they happen.
—The Toronto Blue Jays come to town next. They just scored 45 runs and had 63 hits in a three-game sweep of the Rockies. And yes, the Rockies are historically bad, but still…
Up next
Friday: Toronto (Max Scherzer, 2-1, 4.39 ERA) at Dodgers (*Clayton Kershaw, 5-2, 3.29 ERA), 7:10 p.m., Sportsnet LA, AM 570, KTNQ 1020
Saturday: Toronto (Chris Bassitt, 11-5, 4.12 ERA) at Dodgers (*Blake Snell, 1-1, 3.21 ERA), 6:10 p.m., Sportsnet LA, AM 570, KTNQ 1020
Sunday: Toronto (*Eric Lauer, 7-2, 2.59 ERA) at Dodgers (Yoshinobu Yamamoto, 10-7, 2.51 ERA) 1:10 p.m., Sportsnet LA, AM 570, KTNQ 1020
Have a comment or something you’d like to see in a future Dodgers newsletter? Email me at [email protected], and follow me on Twitter at @latimeshouston. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts stares down at his batting gloves after flying out in the ninth inning against the Minnesota Twins at Dodger Stadium on July 22.
(Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times)
“Think about it,” Betts said. “Go and look at it. I haven’t been right since.”
Betts was a MVP candidate when he went down, hitting .304 at the time. He batted .263 after his return, including .185 over the final 17 games of the regular season.
The troubles from last year have carried into this year, in which he’s batting a career-worst .236.
Betts wanted to clarify the point he was trying to make.
“I wasn’t blaming it on my hand or anything,” he said. “I was just saying since coming back, I haven’t done anything. It’s not just this season.”
Betts even went out of his way to downplay the severity of the injury or how it has affected him since.
“It wasn’t like I obliterated my hand,” he said. “It was a fracture.”
Betts pointed to how his grip strength was measured in spring training. The readings showed his grip was stronger than he was the previous year.
Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts makes a play during a game against the St. Louis Cardinals at Dodger Stadium on Aug. 4.
(Luke Johnson/Los Angeles Times)
“There’s no correlation to anything,” he said. “I wish I could blame it on something, but nah.”
My visit to Dodger Stadium on Tuesday was prompted by what Betts told reporters after a weekend series in Tampa. The remarks in question were made when Betts was hitless in his last four games; the streak extended to a career-high five after another hitless game on Monday against the St. Louis Cardinals.
“I’ve done everything I can possibly do,” Betts told reporters. “It’s up to God at this point.”
In print, at least, he sounded defeated. His quotes, I told him, were depressing.
“I don’t know if you’re watching what’s going on, but it is depressing,” Betts said with a smile.
So he still had a sense of humor.
Which isn’t to say he’s not baffled or frustrated by his lack of production.
“It’s unexplainable,” Betts said. “I don’t know. It sucks. You know how in Space Jam, they take your superpowers away? Kind of what it feels like. I’ve never been there, never done that, so to have that happen, I don’t know how to get out of it.”
Without any specific answers, he’s doubled down on the general philosophy that made him one of baseball’s greatest players.
He’s worked.
“That’s the only thing I can do,” he said. “The only thing I can control is my effort and my attitude.”
When Betts says he’s done everything he could do to recapture his old magic, what he’s really saying is that he’s doing everything he can.
“I hit for three or four hours a day,” he said. “At some point, your body breaks down, but I’d rather break down than not give the effort.”
Betts showed up at Dodger Stadium before 1:30 p.m. on Monday for the series opener against the Cardinals, which started at 7:10. He hit in the batting cages, worked on his defense on the field, and participated in batting practice. He returned to the batting cages at around 4:30 and stayed there until 6:15.
“Just trying to relearn, going to the basics, relearning myself,” he said. “I had to go back and think about what I used to do in the minor leagues, [those] types of things.”
Betts might not have yet figured out the adjustments required from him to break out of his slump, but he’s also not out of ideas. He acknowledged he’s purposely sounded more clueless than he actually is in order to avoid discussing changes he’s trying to implement.
“There’s a bunch of stuff that I’m working on,” he said. “That’s stuff that, no offense to you guys, but you guys wouldn’t understand.”
The former right fielder didn’t think the workload at shortstop was the source of his problems, and he didn’t think his batspeed had declined in the last couple of years, as data from baseball’s tracking system had indicated.
“I haven’t hit the ball solid,” Betts said. “Naturally, you slow down because you try to hit the ball solid.”
“If that’s not confidence from a manager to a player,” Roberts said, “I don’t know what is.”
Betts rewarded Roberts’ faith on Tuesday in a 12-6 victory over the Cardinals on Tuesday, as he was three for four with a double, a walk and three runs. The three-hit game was his first in almost two months.
Betts refused to read too much into the performance.
“It’s good to get the results, but it’s one game,” he said. “Every time we talk about [a good game], I go 0 for 20 after. So we’ll see about tomorrow.”
He departed the stadium uncertain of what the results would be the next day, but he knew what the process would be. He would continue to work and continue to search for answers.
Hi, and welcome to another edition of Dodgers Dugout. My name is Houston Mitchell. It’s time for some random thoughts about the Dodgers.
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—This team seems to make more costly errors than any Dodger team in recent memory.
—Why is James Outman, who is hitting .137/.245/.269 over his last two seasons with the Dodgers (including .103 this season), in the majors while Ryan Ward, who is hitting .315/.401/.614 with 26 homers at triple-A Oklahoma City, sits in the minors? Maybe Ward (who hit .258/.317/.543 with 33 homers last season in triple A) will flame out in the majors, but we know Outman can’t hit. We don’t know what Ward can do yet.
—Would moving from shortstop help Mookie Betts hit again? Let’s take a look at his numbers last season:
when he started at shortstop: .308/.407/.500, 15 doubles, nine homers, 39 walks, 29 K’s in 240 at bats.
at right field: .273/.324/.517, eight doubles, nine homers, 14 walks, 21 K’s in 161 at bats.
He hit better as a shortstop last season, so perhaps that isn’t the problem after all.
However, I think the Dodgers are much better defensively with Betts in right and Miguel Rojas (or someone else) at short.
—The Dodgers have played poorly lately, but we still won’t have any sense of what this team really is until after the trade deadline.
—Betts is 32 and has always had one of the slowest bat speeds in the majors. We could be looking at how he’s going to hit from now on. Probably not, but the days of 39 homers and 107 RBIs may be over, regardless if he rebounds this season or not.
—A lot of people have asked what is up with Charley Steiner, who called part of the first game of the season and nothing since. The Dodgers remain mum, but we do know he was battling cancer last season. We wish him well.
—Tyler Glasnow looked like an ace Tuesday, giving up one run in seven innings while striking out 12. If he can stay healthy, that will be huge come the postseason. That’s a big if though.
—Austin Barnes is hitting .174 (4 for 23) for the Giants in triple A. He singled off Blake Snell, who was pitching a rehab game for the Dodgers, so some things never change. If he could have faced Snell his whole career, he’d be in the Hall of Fame.
—Dalton Rushing, who came up when Barnes was released to provide more offense, is hitting .216/.280/.297 in 27 games. With the Dodgers this season, Barnes hit .214/.233/.286. It was still the right move to make, but it hasn’t worked out like expected so far.
—Max Muncy is ahead of schedule as he works to return from a bone bruise in his knee. In May, who would have thought we’d be eagerly awaiting the return of Muncy?
—Bobblehead nights I’d like to see: A duo of reliever Mike Marshall and outfielder Mike Marshall. John Shelby, pounding his glove just before a catch. Jay Howell, with a lot of pine tar on the outside of his glove. Pedro Guerrero, holding a bat with no glove in sight. Jerry Reuss no-hitter bobblehead. Mickey Hatcher two World Series home runs bobblehead. Steve Yeager blocking home plate, with that flap hanging down from his mask. Bill Buhler with that can of freeze spray he used. Brian Holton and Tim Crews, unsung heroes of the 1988 team. The 1988 “Stuntmen,” Hatcher, Rick Dempsey, Dave Anderson, Franklin Stubbs and Danny Heep. Jim Wynn and Lance Rautzhan, two of my favorite Dodgers.
—Blake Treinen could be back in the next couple of weeks.
—I don’t wish for anyone to be injured, but this forearm inflammation that is sidelining Tanner Scott could be a blessing in disguise, giving him a chance to reset mentally and come back like the Scott of old. He is a much better pitcher than he has shown so far.
—The Dodgers are hitting .212 in July.
—The league might be catching up to Hyeseong Kim. He is hitting .191 this month with only one extra-base hit and on walk in 47 at bats.
—Tommy Edman is seven for his last 49 (.143)
—Michael Conforto is hitting better than Betts, Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernández this month.
—There are 59 games left to go and the Dodgers are still in first place. We can always examine the negatives, but we have to remember the positives too.
—Baseball Reference ran a simulation 1,000 times of the remaining games and the postseason. Here are the teams that won the World Series at least 20 times in those simulations:
Chicago Cubs, won World Series 175 times Detroit, 125 times Milwaukee, 114 times NY Yankees, 105 times Houston (no relation), 95 times Dodgers, 72 times Philadelphia, 61 times Toronto, 49 times NY Mets, 44 times Boston, 31 times Seattle, 30 times San Diego, 26 times Tampa Bay, 26 times Texas, 23 times
Trade prospects?
The trade deadline was Thursday at 3 p.m. PT. The Dodgers have needs. They signed relievers (Scott, Kirby Yates) in the offseason so they wouldn’t have to trade for relief help, yet here we are. An outfielder could be nice. I’ve long since stopped guessing what Andrew Friedman will do at the deadline, because it’s almost always something unexpected. Instead, we will look at the top players available at positions it seems the team needs help. Click on the player name to be taken to their stats page at Baseball Reference. They are listed in alphabetical order and stats are through Wednesday.
Starting pitchers
Sandy Alcantara, Miami: Won the NL Cy Young in 2022. Missed last season after Tommy John surgery, so you know that makes him extra appealing to the Dodgers. Has a 6.66 ERA this season, which I’m told is not very good.
Mitch Keller, Pittsburgh: Is only 4-10 with a 3.53 ERA and is owed $56 million over the next three seasons, so this seems unlikely, but possible.
Seth Lugo, Kansas City: Lugo throws nine different pitcher (think Rich Hill, only right-handed.) Finished second in AL Cy Young voting last season after going 16-9 with a 3.00 ERA. Has a 2.95 ERA this season.
Relief pitchers
Félix Bautista, Baltimore: It would take a slew of prospects to get him, but Bautista has thrown 161 innings in the majors and struck out 248 to go with a 2.01 ERA.
David Bednar, Pittsbugh: A two-time All-Star who has rebounded from a terrible 2024 season (5.77 ERA), Bednar would probably cost the least, as far as prospects go, in a trade. Led the league with 39 saves in 2023.
Emmanuel Clase, Cleveland: Had one of the best seasons ever by a closer last season (4-2, 47 saves, 0.61 ERA, 39 hits and 10 walks in 74.1 innings) but is having his worst season this year, if you can call 5-2, 22 saves and a 2.80 ERA “worst.”
Jhoan Durán, Minnesota: His fastball averages 100 mph. Had an off year last season (3.64 ERA), but has rebounded, posting a 1.94 ERA and 15 saves in 46.1 innings, giving up 37 hits and 16 walks while striking out 51.
Ryan Helsley, St. Louis: Had 49 saves last season, but not quite as successful this season. 34 innings, 34 hits, 14 walks is not a shutdown reliever.
Griffin Jax, Minnesota: Has struck out 68 in 44 innings, but also has a 4.09 ERA. His FIP is 2.07 though, so he has been a bit unlucky.
Cade Smith, Cleveland: Only in his second season, he drew Cy Young votes as a rookie last year, when he struck out 103 in 75.1 innings. Has struck out 64 in 43.1 innings this season as the stup man for Clase. Could the Dodgers send over a package that could land them Clase, Smith and Kwan? They are one of the few teams that could.
Outfielders
Jarren Duran, Boston: Having an off season by his standards but finished eighth in MVP voting last season.
Steven Kwan, Cleveland: A three-time Gold Glove in left who hits for average and draws walks.
Cedric Mullins, Baltimore: He would give the Dodgers a true center fielder, but just an average bat. Hit 30 homers in 2021, but hasn’t had more than 18 since.
Luis Robert, Jr., Chicago White Sox: Good glove, and used to be able to hit, but not anymore. Hitting .206 this season. Continually linked to the Dodgers in trade rumors, but, well, let’s hope not.
Please note that this is not an all-encompassing list. It’s mainly the names that have been linked to the Dodgers at one point over the last several weeks. It doesn’t include players such as Jesús Sánchez, Bryan Reynolds or Mason Miller, who are also possibilities.
And, time for the warning I give out every year: Don’t fall for every rumor you see online. Some sites will try to lure you in with a headline such as “Dodgers, Rays discuss Mookie Betts deal” when what happened was the Rays GM called the Dodgers and asked “Any chance you will trade Mookie Betts?” And the Dodgers say “No.” Technically, they discussed a Betts deal, but did they really? If you want to keep track of what’s going on with the Dodgers, Jack Harris has it covered for us at latimes.com/sports/dodgers. Jack takes a look at the trade deadline here. For a broader picture, I recommend mlbtraderumors.com.
Ohtani ties record
Shohei Ohtani homered in his fifth consecutive game Wednesday, tying the Dodger record. A look:
Home runs in five consecutive games:
Ohtani, July 19-23, 2025 (five home runs total) Max Muncy, Aug. 15-21, 2019 (five) Joc Pederson, May 31-June 3, 2015 (five) Adrián González, Sept. 27, 2014-April 8, 2015 (seven) Matt Kemp, Sept. 28-Oct. 3, 2010 (five) Shawn Green, July 21-25, 2001 (five) Roy Campanella, June 11-17, 1950 (five)
A Dodger has homered in four straight games 35 times, including four times by Duke Snider and twice by Pedro Guerrero, Matt Kemp, Gary Sheffield and Reggie Smith.
Welcome back
Rich Hill, a fan favorite when he pitched for the Dodgers back when Gerald Ford was president, signed with the Kansas City Royals and gave up only one run in five innings of his first start. Hill, 45, is pitching for his 14th majors league team, tying the record set by former Dodger top prospect Edwin Jackson.
Hill has played for:
Angels Baltimore Boston Chicago Cubs Cleveland Dodgers Kansas City Minnesota NY Mets NY Yankees Oakland Pittsburgh San Diego Tampa Bay
Players to play for 13 teams *Octavio Dotel
12 teams *Mike Morgan Matt Stairs Ron Villone
11 teams *Paul Bako Miguel Batista *Henry Blanco Bruce Chen Royce Clayton Bartolo Colon Joe Gerhardt LaTroy Hawkins *Kenny Lofton *Deacon McGuire *Terry Mulholland *Dennys Reyes Fernando Rodney Julian Tavarez *Gus Weyhring Rick White *Todd Zeile
*-played for the Dodgers
Worst month?
The Dodgers are 6-11 this month. Have they had any months where they finished .500 or worse since their postseason streak began in 2013?
Months at .500 or worse by the Dodgers since 2013:
May, 2013, 10-17, .370 July, 2025: 7-11, .389 September, 2017: 12-17, .414 April, 2018: 11-14, .440 September, 2013, 12-15, .444 July, 2024: 11-13, .458 April, 2016: 12-13, .480 May, 2018: 14-14, .500 May, 2014: 15-15, .500 June, 2015: 15-15, .500 June, 2023: 12-12, .500
Note: This does not include short months (March or October) when they may have gone 0-1 or 2-3.
Up next
Friday: Dodgers (Emmet Sheehan, 1-1, 4.41 ERA) at Boston (Brayan Bello, 6-4, 3.23 ERA), 4:10 p.m., Sportsnet LA, AM 570, KTNQ 1020
Saturday: Dodgers (*Clayton Kershaw, 4-1, 3.27 ERA) at Boston (*Garrett Crochet, 11-4, 2.19 ERA), 4:15 p.m., Fox, AM 570, KTNQ 1020
Sunday: Dodgers (Shohei Ohtani, 0-0, 1.50 ERA) at Boston (Walker Buehler, 6-6, 5.72 ERA), 10:35 a.m., Sportsnet LA, AM 570, KTNQ 1020
The Dodgers score five runs in the second inning of Game 2 of the 1988 World Series, including a key homer by Mike Marshall. Watch and listen here.
Until next time…
Have a comment or something you’d like to see in a future Dodgers newsletter? Email me at [email protected], and follow me on Twitter at @latimeshouston. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
The change to the lineup was even more of a surprise.
In what has become a season-long struggle by Mookie Betts and Dodgers coaches to get the slumping superstar back on track, this weekend brought the most glaring examples of experimentation yet.
First, on Saturday, manager Dave Roberts gave Betts an unexpected off day and providing what he felt was a needed mental reset after sensing Betts — who missed the All-Star Game for the first time in a decade this year — was still off despite his week-long break.
Then, on Sunday, Roberts gave the veteran slugger an unexpected challenge: Bumping him up from the two-hole to the leadoff spot in the batting order in hopes it would trigger something amid a career-worst season at the plate.
“Looking at how things are going, where Mookie is at emotionally, mechanics-wise, all in totality,” Roberts said, “I felt that giving him a different look in the lineup, hitting him at the top, something he’s obviously been accustomed to throughout his career, will put him in a mindset of just [trying] to get on base and just trying to take good at-bats.”
“There’s a lot of internal kind of searching that goes on with the mechanics and things like that,” Roberts added. “But I personally do feel that the external part of it — hitting at the top of the order, having a mindset to get on base — I think will help move this along better.”
It all served as the latest confounding chapter in what has been a trying season for Betts and his once-potent swing, the newest effort by the club to ease the frustration that has weighed on his mind amid a summer-long slump — while waiting for his mechanics to finally get back in sync.
Mookie Betts sits in the dugout in the first inning before batting against the Milwaukee Brewers on Sunday.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
“This is a process I’ve never been through,” said a dejected Betts, who entered Monday sporting a .240 batting average (ranking 120th out of 158 qualified MLB hitters), .684 OPS (132nd) and 11 home runs (tied for 89th), to go with well-below-league-average marks in underlying metrics like average exit velocity (29th percentile among MLB hitters), hard-hit rate (20th percentile) and bat speed (12th percentile).
“I don’t have any answers,” he continued. “I don’t know how to get through this. I don’t know. I’m working every day. Hopefully it turns.”
The leadoff exercise started with mixed results Sunday. Betts singled in the third inning, one at-bat before new No. 2 man Shohei Ohtani hit a home run. But, in a failed ninth-inning rally that sent the Dodgers to a series sweep against the Milwaukee Brewers, he finished a one-for-five day by lining out sharply to center field, ending the game with Ohtani stuck in the on-deck circle.
Betts will continue to lead off for the foreseeable future, with Roberts committing to keeping him at the top of the order — and Ohtani, the team’s previous leadoff hitter, in the two spot — at least until Max Muncy makes his expected return from a knee injury sometime next month.
“The only way we’ll know, we’ll find out, is once we do that for an extended period of time,” Roberts said. “I do think that there will be some fallout from that kind of external mindset of, ‘Hey, I’m hitting at the top of the order. My job is to get on base, set the table for Shohei and the guys behind him.’ I think that will lead to better performance.”
Until such a turnaround actually materializes, however, the search for answers to Betts’ struggles will go on, with the Dodgers continuing to try to unravel the mystery behind a sudden, unsettling slump no one saw coming.
“I just got to play better,” Betts said. “I got to figure it out.”
Indeed, while his superstar teammates were at All-Star festivities in Atlanta last week, Betts spent the break back home in Nashville, working on his swing at a private training facility.
In one clip that emerged on social media, Betts was seen doing one of the many drills that have helped him maintain offensive excellence over his 12 big-league seasons: Taking hacks with a yellow ball pressed snuggly between his elbows, trying to promote the fluid and connected motion that has eluded him this year.
“With Mookie, a lot of it has to do with how his arms and hands work, and getting his arm structure properly lined up,” hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc said. “It sets up how the bat slots, and how his body sequences.”
For Betts, a 5-foot-10 talent who has long exceeded expectations as one of the sport’s most undersized sluggers, such mechanical efficiency has always been paramount.
As he noted early this season, when his slump first came into focus in early May, he has never had the same margin for error as some of the sport’s more physically gifted star hitters. He can’t muscle doubles or hit home runs off the end of his bat. He can’t afford to have a bad bat path or disjointed swing sequence and be the same hitter who, just two years ago, batted .307 with 39 home runs.
“I can’t, unfortunately, not have my A-swing that day but still run into something and [have it] go over the fence or whatever,” Betts said back then. “Even when I have my A-swing, if I don’t get it, it’s not gonna be a homer. If I don’t flush that ball in that gap, they’re gonna catch it.”
And this season, much to his chagrin, flushing line drives and cranking big flies has become a frustrating rarity.
Identifying the reason why has led to countless potential theories.
At the start of the year, Betts believed he created bad swing habits while recovering from a March stomach bug that saw him lose 20 pounds and some of his already underwhelming bat speed.
But as he tried reverting to mental cues and mechanical feels that had recalibrated him in the past, nothing seemed to click in the same way they once did.
“The cues and feels that I’ve used my whole life, in Boston and L.A., just don’t work anymore,” he said this weekend. “So I’m just trying to find out who I am now, what works now.”
Some of that, of course, could be attributed to age. Betts will be 33 by the end of this season. He is coming up on 1,500 career games. Inevitably, even players of his caliber eventually start to decline physically.
Roberts, however, framed it more through the lens of evolution. On the one hand, he said of Betts, “I know he’s still in his prime. I know he’s as strong as he’s been in quite some time.” However, the manager added, “his body has changed and will continue to change,” requiring Betts to find new ways to maximize the power the team still believes he possesses.
“That’s the nature of hitting,” Van Scoyoc said. “He has to find something for him that works organically, that gets him lined up again.”
This dynamic is why, to both Betts and the Dodgers, his full-time move to shortstop this season hasn’t been to blame.
Betts has repeatedly pushed back against that narrative, pointing to the MVP-caliber numbers he posted while playing the position during the first half of last year (before a broken hand cost him two months and forced him to return to right field for the Dodgers’ World Series run) and the two-week tear with which he started this season (when he batted .304 with four home runs over his first 15 games).
Mookie Betts and the Dodgers continue to insist his season-long slump at the plate has little to do with his full-time move to shortstop.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)
And though his new defensive role has come with some added challenges — Betts said on his Bleacher Report podcast last month that his daily pregame workload has increased while playing shortstop, to the point “it probably does weigh on you a little bit hitting” — he has also emphasized the confidence he has gained from his defensive improvements; his shortstop play serving as the one thing that has gone right in a season of offensive misery.
“I just can’t see that you go out there and stick him in right field tonight and he’s going to throw out two hits or three hits, or he goes to second base and he’s going to go on a heater,” Roberts echoed earlier this month, before reiterating Sunday that the team has not considered changing Betts’ position. “That’s hard for me to kind of imagine. It’s a fair ask. But I just don’t see that as the case.”
Instead, the focus has remained not only on Betts’ flawed swing mechanics, but the resulting side effects it has had on his approach at the plate.
One stat that jumped out to Roberts recently: In Betts’ last 99 plate appearances, he has walked only one time — a shockingly low number for a hitter with a walk rate of nearly 11% over his career.
To Roberts, it’s a sign that Betts, in his ongoing search to get his swing synced up, is failing to accomplish the even more fundamental task of working good counts and waiting out mistakes.
“If you’re ‘in-between’ on spin versus velocity, and [getting in bad] counts, you’re not as convicted [with your swing],” Roberts said, tying all of Betts’ problems into one self-fulfilling cycle that has only further perpetuated his lack of results. “So my eyes tell me he’s been ‘in-between’ a lot.”
Which is why, in recent weeks, Roberts had started to mull the idea of moving Betts into the leadoff spot.
After all, the manager hypothesized, if Betts can’t find his swing by grinding in the batting cage and analyzing his mechanics — as he did during his off day on Saturday — then maybe reframing his mindset in games can better help him get there.
“It speaks to how much faith I have in him as a ballplayer,” Roberts said. “To, where he’s scuffling, not move him down but ironically move him higher in the order. “I think that kind of support, and the different way that he’ll see the lineup as it’s presented each day, will kind of lead into a different mindset and I think that’ll be a good thing for all of us.”
For now, the Dodgers can only hope.
With Muncy still out, Freddie Freeman having his own recent slump compounded by a ball that hit him in the left wrist on Sunday, and the Dodgers stuck in a current 2-10 spiral that has seen their once-comfortable division lead dwindle leading up to the trade deadline, they need the old Betts more than ever right now.
Thus far, the search for answers has met no end.
“It’s hard,” Betts said, “but I got to figure it out at some point.”
It took just one game coming out of the All-Star break for Dave Roberts to know Mookie Betts still wasn’t right.
A week ago, Roberts was hopeful that Betts — coming off his first missed All-Star Game in a decade — would return from the break refocused and rejuvenated; ready to snap out of a career-worst start to his season and rediscover a swing that has eluded him for much of the campaign.
Instead, in the Dodgers’ second-half opener Friday night, Betts went 0 for 4 with two strikeouts. His batting average dipped to .241 (more than 20 points worse than he has ever posted in a full season) while his OPS fell to .688 (the worst it has been all year). And, as has been the case for most of the summer, his signs of frustration were abundantly clear, with the 32-year-old looking lost at the plate.
Thus, when Roberts set his team’s lineup for Saturday, the manager made a surprise decision to leave Betts out of it, giving his superstar shortstop an unplanned day off after calling Betts on Saturday morning to discuss the state of his game.
“Talking to him, seeing where his head is at, seeing where he’s at mechanically, I just thought tonight was a night where I felt he needed to be down,” Roberts said hours later, ahead of the Dodgers’ game against the Milwaukee Brewers.
“He was more than willing and wanted to be out there. But for me, I wanted to take it out of his hands [so he could] have a day. I’ve talked about this before, just having players watch a baseball game. And I understand we just had four days off at the break. But still showing up at the ballpark, and not participating, watching, that’s a different mindset, psyche than being at home. So for him to come here, show up, not play, know he’s not going to play, I feel good about the work he’s going to put in today. Also, I think, for the mind it will be beneficial.”
Betts did not talk to reporters Saturday, but did go through his normal set of pregame infield drills at shortstop — further confirming that, indeed, his absence from the lineup had nothing to do with any sort of injury-related issue.
While Roberts said his “expectation” is that Betts will be back in action Sunday, he left the door open to giving Betts another day off for the series finale.
“It’s going to be a day-to-day thing,” Roberts said. “It’s going to be my decision on how I feel he is mentally to take on that night’s starter.”
There was no specific moment from Friday’s game that convinced Roberts such a break was warranted. Instead, it was the fact that so little had seemingly changed from where Betts was before the All-Star break, when he reached the midway mark in a three-for-24 slump and batting just .185 over his previous 31 games.
“He’s not used to struggling like this,” Roberts said of Betts, who also has only 11 home runs and a .377 slugging percentage. “There’s a part of it where you feel like you’re letting people down, letting the team down. That weight that is just natural for him to carry is there. That’s a little bit from last night, just seeing him.”
Betts has struggled to identify the cause of his decline — one so stark, he has a below-league-average mark of 95 in the all-encompassing OPS+ metric (effectively meaning he has been 5% less productive than a league average hitter).
In an interview before Friday’s game, he said he has cycled through various “feels” with his swing in hopes of getting his mechanics realigned. Hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc pointed to inefficiencies in the way Betts “loads” his arms and hands, which he believes have impacted the slugger’s bat path and swing sequence.
“There’s no exact [fix], where you can do this, this and this,” Van Scoyoc said, “because he has to find something for him that works organically that gets him lined up.”
To that end, Roberts’ hope is that Saturday’s day off will help.
That it comes just two days into the second half signals how urgent Betts’ struggles have become.
“He understood,” Roberts said. “He’s a guy that wants to be out there every single day. But I think he understood that it was my decision and I think it’s best for him, I think it’s best for our ball club. He’ll be ready when called upon.”
Hi, and welcome to another edition of Dodgers Dugout. My name is Houston Mitchell. It has been so hot the last couple of days, my neighborhood ice cream man has changed the sign on his truck to just say “cream.”
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Once again, so you don’t get tired of hearing from me, I have reached out to someone else to answer some frequently asked questions. We welcome my Times colleague Jack Harris, who is our main Dodgers reporter.
Q. The most-often asked question I get now is “Why is Michael Conforto playing so much while Hyeseong Kim rides the bench?” So, why?
Harris: A couple of reasons:
1) Kim’s best defensive position, second base, has been blocked lately by Tommy Edman, who hadn’t been able to play the outfield in recent weeks because of his nagging ankle injury. Kim has primarily been in center field as a result, where his fundamentals aren’t nearly as polished.
2) The Dodgers guaranteed Conforto $17 million this offseason, and still have hope he can turn things somewhat around offensively. At least until the deadline, they need to keep giving him opportunities to see whether he can be a contributor, and if not, whether that’s an area they need to target reinforcements.
That said, Edman did return to outfield duties this week. And Dave Roberts has indicated the playing time between Kim and Conforto will start to even out (though both sat plenty this past week because the Dodgers faced several left-handed starters).
My guess is, over the next couple months, Kim will become a more regular member of the starting lineup — assuming he continues to hit. But in the meantime, you’ll still see Conforto (who, in fairness, has shown some signs of life lately) get regular starts as well.
Q. Max Muncy turns his season around, in some part because he started wearing glasses. Last season, it was discovered that Kiké Hernández needed glasses. Why isn’t a comprehensive eye exam part of every spring training?
Harris: As Hernández noted when we wrote about this last year, players typically do get eye exams in spring training. However, in both his and Muncy’s cases, they had very subtle imperfections that weren’t flagged until they visited with an eye specialist.
Muncy himself said his vision is 20/12 (which, presumably, is why his eyesight had never come under question before), but that the astigmatism he learned he had in his right eye left him left eye dominant; not ideal for a left-handed hitter. He insists the glasses are only part of why he’s been better recently, noting a breakthrough with his swing as the bigger difference the past couple months.
Still, Muncy and Hernández are not the first big-leaguers to discover they could benefit from glasses (Hernández said he first heard a similar story from Martín Maldonado). I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s something that gets a closer look — pardon the pun — in the future from teams.
Q. Your best guess on when these pitchers will return: Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Roki Sasaki.
Harris: Glasnow will need at least two more rehab outings. If those go well, that should line him up to return shortly after the All-Star break.
Snell should probably be ready to start facing hitters this upcoming homestand, if not soon after. He’ll probably need a couple of live sessions, then 3-4 minor-league rehab outings. And since those happen one week at a time, I’d say early August is a safe bet.
Sasaki is a much bigger question. He got a shoulder injection earlier this month, and was feeling much better this last week, according to Roberts. But he still hasn’t thrown a bullpen, let alone come close to facing hitters. There’s time for him to come back if he can keep progressing, but it would probably be closer to September at this rate. Tony Gonsolin, who remains shut down from throwing himself, is probably in a similar boat.
Q. It was interesting that after Emmet Sheehan pitched so well in his lone start for the Dodgers (four innings, one run, three hits, six strikeouts) that they would send him down after that. What was the thinking there?
That was a surprise to me. But the way the Dodgers looked at it, Sheehan wasn’t fully built up yet, and they needed someone to pitch Tuesday and Sunday (so on four days’ rest) this past road trip — with the first at hitter-friendly Coors Field, no less.
Thus, the team decided it’d be better to let Sheehan continue stretching out in a more controlled environment in Oklahoma City, and keep Justin Wrobleski on the big-league roster for those two outings.
Sheehan will be eligible to return during next weekend’s Astros series, and Roberts has indicated there will be an opportunity for him to start games once they get there. But for now, Wrobleski has also continued to impress in his extended opportunity.
For perhaps the first time all year, the team might actually soon have some legitimate starting pitching depth (but don’t blame me if I just jinxed it).
Q. Should we be worried about the down season Mookie Betts is having at the plate?
Panicked? No. But somewhat concerned? Probably.
While Betts has always been a relatively streaky hitter, the numbers he is on pace for this year would be career-lows across the board.
Granted, he was affected by his early season stomach virus, and did bat better than .300 over 32 games from late April through the first week of June. But overall, he simply hasn’t generated as much power or hard contact as he usually does (he has only six home runs in his last 73 games), and his already underwhelming bat speed has continued to decline.
I’d still expect him to bounce back, at least to some extent, in the second half. But until he does, the more you have to wonder whether — at age 32 — he is starting to enter a new, less productive, stage of his career offensively.
The other explanation, of course, is that his (ever-impressive) shortstop play is taking some toll on him at the plate. However, he has continually denied that, and noted how last year he was posting MVP numbers while grinding just to learn the position, so I remain dubious of that theory.
Q. In a best-case scenario, how many innings would Shohei Ohtani be able to pitch in a start by the end of the season?
There’s no reason he can’t get stretched out to make full-length starts of 6-7 innings by the end of the season.
The question is whether that will make most sense for the Dodgers down the stretch run of the year.
Ohtani’s bat remains the single most important piece of the team’s chances to repeat as World Series champions. The more he pitches, the more variables that are introduced to his offensive capabilities.
It’s worth remembering, Ohtani turns 31 next week. Even his seemingly superhuman strengths have their limits. And Roberts has alluded to bouts of minor fatigue he has dealt with since beginning to ramp up as a pitcher.
My guess is, if the rotation remains ravaged by injuries and there are pitching holes to plug come October, Ohtani will be treated like more a normal starter.
But, if the Dodgers have three to four other healthy starters they trust by then, it might make more sense to limit his innings — and perhaps use him as a de facto opener in bullpen games instead.
That’s why, for now, the team is in no rush to increase his innings. They’re letting him build a foundation a few innings at a time, and will see how the rest of the staff shapes up before adding even more to his plate.
Q. The Dodgers seem to have had a rain delay everywhere they go this season. What do you do in the press box during a rain delay?
It’s always a good time to get caught up on other stories I’m working on (that’s how I spent most of Sunday’s hourlong delay).
Otherwise, either eat, watch other games around the league, or talk to fellow reporters in the press box.
The best delay was definitely at Coors Field this past week. It was their “hometown hoedown” theme night, so they were doing country music karaoke on the scoreboard. Wisely, Garth Brooks’ “Friends in Low Places” was one of the songs (my personal go-to whenever I stumble into a karaoke bar). There might have been some singing from yours truly in the press box that night.
NL All-Star lineup could be all Dodgers
The two finalists for All-Star starter at each position have been announced, and there’s a Dodger or two at each position, so it’s possible that almost the entire NL starting lineup could be Dodgers. As the top vote-getter in the NL, Shohei Ohtani is guaranteed to start at DH. The other finalists:
National League finalists Catcher: Will Smith, Carson Kelly (Cubs) First base: Freddie Freeman, Pete Alonso (Mets) Second base: Ketel Marte (Diamondbacks), Tommy Edman Shortstop: Francisco Lindor (Mets), Mookie Betts Third base: Manny Machado (Padres), Max Muncy Outfield: Pete Crow-Armstrong (Cubs), Teoscar Hernández (Dodgers), Ronald Acuña Jr. (Braves), Kyle Tucker (Cubs), Andy Pages (Dodgers), Juan Soto (Mets)
They are listed in the order they finished in the balloting. Voting began Monday at 9 a.m. PDT and concludes Wednesday at 9 a.m. PDT. Voting can be done online at MLB.com/vote. The first round of voting is thrown out, and only votes received from Monday-Wednesday will count.
Former Dodger Austin Barnes, released by the team earlier this season, has signed a minor-league deal with the San Francisco Giants.
Barnes has been assigned to the Giants’ Arizona Complex League team, probably to work himself back into playing shape before heading to triple A or the Giants. If he makes the Giants, they will owe him the prorated portion of the MLB minimum salary of $760,000, and the Dodgers will owe the remainder of the $3.5 million Barnes was due for the 2025 season.
The Giants’ president of baseball operations is Buster Posey, who was the longtime catcher for the team and the backstop for three World Series title teams. Their starting catcher, Patrick Bailey, has struggled mightily this season. The Giants have a mix of veterans and youngsters in the starting rotation, and a guy such as Barnes could prove beneficial for all of them, as he was always considered almost an extra coach for the Dodgers. Or, he could play poorly in Arizona and they never bring him up. Either way, it won’t cost them much.
Catching up with Walker Buehler
Colleague Bill Shaikincaught up with former Dodger Walker Buehler when the Boston Red Sox were in town to face the Angels recently. Buehler has struggled mightily with the Red Sox this season. He is currently 5-6 with a 6.45 ERA.
Among Buehler’s quotes:
“Somehow, this year, I’ve managed to do all the negative things you can. I’ll keep working. It’s just tough to let down our team….”
“I think, in all honesty, it’s a lot easier to stay good than to get good. The guys on the other side of the field from me drive nice cars, get paid a lot of money to be really good at what they do. Outside of a couple swings [during the Angels game], I think largely I beat myself, which is just not something that you can do here.
“I think it’s in there. I think my arm still moves good. I think I can still make the ball move. I think I can still pitch in the major leagues.
“At some point, the belief, it gets hard to keep tricking yourself. At some point, I have got to put some results up there, for myself, but also for this organization.”
One impressive thing about Buehler, is he never hides when he’s doing poorly. He will stand there and answer questions. Hopefully, he rebounds and becomes a productive pitcher again. Though you have to wonder, after seeing him in last year’s World Series, if he would be better off as a high-leverage reliever now.
With the Fourth of July holiday Friday, the next Dodgers Dugout will be early next week. I hope you all have an enjoyable holiday weekend. When we return, we will resume our “Top 10” at each position series.
These names seem familiar
A look at how some prominent Dodgers from the last few seasons are doing with their new team (through Sunday). Click on the player name to be taken to the Baseball Reference page with all their stats.
From 2002, Shawn Green has six hits, including four home runs, against the Brewers. Watch and listen here.
Until next time…
Have a comment or something you’d like to see in a future Dodgers newsletter? Email me at [email protected], and follow me on Twitter at @latimeshouston. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
DENVER — As the Dodgers completed a sweep of the Colorado Rockies on Thursday, it was two of their cornerstone hitters who helped lead the way.
In what was then a tie game in the top of the sixth inning, Mookie Betts led off with a double in the gap, Freddie Freeman brought him home with a line drive to right, and the Dodgers took a lead they wouldn’t relinquish, completing a three-game sweep that kept them tied for the best record in baseball.
For much of the last four years, that would’ve been an unremarkable sequence. Shohei Ohtani might be the most potent hitter in the Dodgers’ lineup, but Betts and Freeman have long been the bedrock of their offense; All-Stars in each season they’ve played in Los Angeles, and MVP candidates more often than not.
On Thursday, however, their sixth-inning heroics had a different feel. Because, for the last three weeks, both superstars have been mired in startlingly stark slumps.
Over Betts’ last 17 games, the former MVP is batting .191 with only one home run and eight RBIs — dropping his season-long production to just a shade above league average (he has a 106 OPS+, an all-encompassing stat in which 100 is considered league average).
Freeman’s last 20 games have been even worse, highlighted by a .160 average that marks the lowest of any single-season, 20-game stretch in his entire career — diminishing the stellar numbers he had this year beforehand.
Such coinciding struggles haven’t triggered any “long-term concerns,” manager Dave Roberts said this week. Thursday’s game provided some long-awaited production, a sigh of relief for two veteran sluggers who don’t often need one.
But still, the numbers are the numbers. A trip to even hitter-friendly Coors Field failed to fully bring them back to life. And until they rebound, external questions about their bats will linger, while their personal search for answers will carry on.
“I’ve been frustrated for about six weeks now,” Freeman said recently.
“If I knew [what was wrong],” Betts echoed this week, “I promise you I wouldn’t keep doing it.”
The Dodgers’ Mookie Betts remains adamant that playing shortstop is not the reason his numbers are down at the plate this season.
(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)
It wasn’t long ago that both Betts and Freeman were on polar opposite trajectories, surging through most of May and early June on offensive heaters that evaporated their slow (and physically hampered) starts to the campaign.
On April 28, Betts was hitting only .230 with an OPS nearly below .700, clearly affected by a stomach virus that drained him over the two weeks leading up to opening day.
Then, in a 32-game stretch from April 29-June 7, his typical levels of production suddenly reappeared. He hit .312 with four doubles, four home runs and an .835 OPS. And he did it all while showing defensive mastery of shortstop, quieting a growing narrative that the toll of his new position was curbing his capabilities at the plate.
“It’s not about shortstop,” Betts said last month. “Because remember, last year, I was playing pretty well [offensively while] playing at shortstop. I had no idea what I was doing. Now, I’m way more confident in how I show up and prepare each and every day. The shortstop argument can’t be it.”
Given his recent skid, however, such speculation is back.
“I’m gonna hold to no,” Roberts said when asked about the dynamic again this week. “I think it’s a fair debate. But all I can go with is what Mookie is saying, as far as the separation of the hitting to the defense, the comfort level with the defense … So I don’t think there’s a correlation.”
Instead, Roberts pointed to a lack of power as a bigger factor. Betts’ .392 slugging percentage thus far is 50 points worse than his previous career-low (which came in his rookie 2014 season). He ranks below league-average in underlying metrics such as exit velocity, hard-hit percentage and bat speed most of all (slipping to the 11th percentile among MLB hitters in that category).
“I think it’s the lack of hitting the ball on the barrel,” Roberts said. “He’s a guy that knows how to find the barrel. But there’s times that he’s chasing a little bit more than he usually does. And then there’s a lot more pop-ups than typical. So to get power, you gotta find the barrel. That’s what we’re trying to do.”
Freeman has endured even more whiplash amid his rollercoaster season.
At the end of May, he was leading the National League with a .374 batting average. He was seemingly compensating for whatever lingering pain remained in the right ankle he had surgically repaired in the offseason, then re-aggravated with a slip in the shower at the end of March.
Even at age 35, he appeared primed for a potential career season, well on track for an elusive first batting title.
“He’s just been relentless,” Roberts said last month.
Now, however, one of the game’s best hit collectors can’t seem to buy a knock most days. His batting average has fallen all the way to .309 entering Friday. Before his Thursday afternoon single, he was 0-for-11 in the Rockies series and one-for-his-last-22 overall.
“I have seen some signs where he’s hit some balls hard and hasn’t gotten anything to show for it,” Roberts said, searching for positives amid Freeman’s highly uncharacteristic slump. “That’s discouraging for him. But I just know he’s gonna find his way out of it.”
To this point, though, he hasn’t, with his usual routine of slump-busting drills — from a net exercise designed to promote an inside-out bat path, to mental cues intended to help him stay back in his swing — having yet to get his mechanics re-aligned.
“I’ve gone through every cue 16 times over again in the last six weeks,” he said. “So just waiting for it to click.”
Though Freeman, who also battled a minor quadriceps injury in recent weeks, still looks hobbled while running the bases and playing defense at times, he insisted the problems aren’t injury-related.
“The only pain is the swing,” he said.
And despite his best efforts to conceal such frustrations during games, Roberts has noticed the toll his slump has started to take.
“I think he just wants consistency from his swing,” Roberts said. “Wants to feel right consistently.”
Somewhat amazingly, the Dodgers haven’t missed a beat even with their superstar pairing clearly out of tune. The team is 13-4 in its last 17 games. The offense has scored six runs per game in that span, half-a-run better than its already MLB-leading season average. Other middle-of-the-order bats — from current NL batting leader Will Smith, to June player of the month candidate Max Muncy and rising second-year star Andy Pages — have helped pick up the slack.
But in the long run, much of the Dodgers’ success still figures to run through Betts and Freeman. They are still the two most veteran, experienced producers in a lineup full of All-Star caliber talent.
At the very least, Roberts insisted, Thursday offered “something to build on.”
But with the way the last month has gone for each, there remains a lot of work left to do.
