DENVER — Mookie Betts was the first Dodgers position player out on the field Tuesday, walking to a spot near the third-base foul line and kneeling on a mat before a coach, who began hitting soft ground balls to his right and left.
It’s a drill Betts does regularly to improve his defense. Betts’ defense, however, really isn’t a problem for the Dodgers.
A six-time Gold Glove winner in right field, Betts moved to shortstop full-time this season, turning his old position over to Teoscar Hernández. And his defense has been a problem. But Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said he isn’t planning any changes to his lineup for the time being.
“Are we playing our best defensive lineup? No,” Roberts said. “But I would say there’s very few teams in the big leagues playing their best defensive lineup every night. Even in a postseason race, you’ve still got to score.”
The Dodgers are definitely in a postseason race and Hernández absolutely helps them score, ranking second on the team in home runs (20) and RBIs (75) after going two for five with a run and an RBI in Tuesday’s 11-4 rout of the Colorado Rockies. He also made two nice running catches.
But then the Dodgers didn’t need much defense Tuesday, pounding out 18 hits with every player in the lineup reaching base as least once. Newcomer Alex Call led the way with a career-high four hits, including a home run and a double, scoring three runs and driving in two others while falling a triple shy of the cycle.
“I wasn’t thinking about it. I was really just trying to get on base another time,” Call, who struck out in his final at-bat in the eighth, said of the cycle. “But everybody else in the dugout was like, ‘if you hit this ball, you better keep running.’ It would have been fun to find a gap and see what would happen.”
The homer, a 453-foot blast in the second, was the longest by a Dodger this season. Yet Call still managed to get the ball back as a souvenir.
“I actually had some some friends in the stands that flew out from Wisconsin, and they tracked down the ball for me,” he said.
The homer helped Call snap out of terrible slump. He entered the game hitting .174 since coming over from Washington at the trade deadline, which wasn’t the kind of introduction he had hoped to have with this new team.
“I wanted to make a good impression. But I think you make a good impression by just showing how you work and showing how you play the game and just trusting in yourself to do what you do,” he said. “I would tell myself, ‘I’m just calibrating.’
“There’s a lot of moving parts, a lot of new things going on. New coaches, new teammates, new situation, new city. You can go on. So it’s a lot.”
Freddie Freeman, Will Smith, Betts and Miguel Rojas joined Hernández and Call with multiple hits for the Dodgers, who scored eight of their 11 runs with two out.
“Really, really pleased with tonight,” manager Dave Roberts said. “You saw a different ball club tonight.”
And a different Call as well.
“It’s certainly a big adjustment, especially when you walk into a clubhouse like ours,” Roberts said. “Coming from the Nationals, a bunch of young players, and you see our ball club in contention and trying to kind of figure out where you where you stand, right? He’s likable the way he plays, practices, and it was good to see him have some success.”
The Dodgers led 7-0 before the Rockies had their second baserunner, with one of those runs coming on Shohei Ohtani’s 44th home run of the season. That made it easy for starter Emmet Sheehan (4-2), who matched a career high by going six innings, striking out a season-best seven batters to earn the win.
“We just got on the board early,” Freeman said. “When you score runs, you want to keep it going as an offense.
“[But] I don’t think anybody’s going to think about how good we did today tomorrow. Every day is a new day. We’ll go out there and give it all again.”
Etc….
Reliever Kirby Yates walked one and struck out one in a one-inning rehab appearance for Oklahoma City on Tuesday. He threw 21 pitches, 13 for strikes. Yates went on the injured list Aug. 1 with lower back pain.
WEST SACRAMENTO — Luis Morales struck out five in his second career start, Brent Rooker and Colby Thomas hit home runs, and the Athletics beat the Angels 7-2 on Saturday night.
Morales (1-0) threw five innings and gave up one run, walking two, in his third career appearance. He has surrendered two runs in 9⅔ innings since his Aug. 1 call-up.
Thomas’ two-run homer, his third of the year, put the A’s on the board in the first inning.
Darell Hernaiz drove in two on a third-inning single, and Rooker padded the A’s lead with his solo homer in the fifth.
Brett Harris and Rooker added insurance in the eighth with RBI singles. Sean Newcomb threw 1⅔ innings and struck out three to earn his first save of the year.
Nolan Schanuel had three hits, and Angels’ starter Tyler Anderson (2-8) yielded four earned runs, three hits, and issued five walks in the loss.
The A’s have won six of their last 10 games, while the Angels have lost six of their last 10.
Morales walked the bases loaded with two outs in the top of the first, but worked his way out of the jam with no runs scored. He only allowed one more runner to reach scoring position for the rest of his outing.
On the first day of spring training, at a Camelback Ranch facility adorned with ever-present reminders of the team’s 2024 World Series title, a Dodgers staff member took in the scene, then chuckled while reflecting on the club’s trek to a championship.
“Last year was not a fun year,” the staff member said. “At least, not until the end.”
Indeed, in the afterglow of the franchise’s first full-season title in more than three decades, the turbulent path getting there became easy to forget.
Last season’s Dodgers dealt with a wave of injuries to the pitching staff, inconsistencies in the lineup, and the club’s lowest full regular-season win total (98) in six years.
Fast-forward six months, and this year’s Dodgers find themselves in a similar place.
They are again navigating absences on the mound and in the bullpen over the last several weeks. Their offense has gone from leading the majors in scoring over the first half of the season, to suddenly sputtering over the last month and a half.
And after a 7-4 loss to the Angels on Monday, in the opener of a three-game Freeway Series at Angel Stadium, they are on pace for only 92 victories with a 68-51 record, clinging to what has dwindled to just a one-game lead in the National League West over the San Diego Padres.
Little fun. Lots of frustration.
Monday’s game was a lost cause from the start.
Despite getting an extra day of rest this week, after flipping places in the rotation with Tyler Glasnow for Sunday’s loss against the Toronto Blue Jays, Yoshinobu Yamamoto turned in one of his worst starts in the majors.
He gave up a home run to Zach Neto on his first pitch of the night, and another run later in the first inning after two walks (one of them on a missed third strike call from home plate umpire Dan Iassogna) and a Yoán Moncada single.
Then, in the fifth, his outing completely fell apart. Five of the first seven batters of the inning reached base (four singles and a hit by pitch). Four runs crossed the plate (including two on a Mike Trout single). And after Yamamoto walked his fifth batter with two outs, manager Dave Roberts was forced into an early hook, removing Yamamoto after 4⅔ innings and six runs (the most Yamamoto has yielded in his 41-game MLB career).
The Dodgers’ lineup didn’t do much better.
Over the first six innings, they failed to figure out Angels right-hander José Soriano and his upper-90s mph sinker, managing just two hits while striking out six times.
By the time they finally put a runner in scoring position in the seventh, the deficit had grown to 7-0 on Neto’s second home run of the night (this time off Alexis Diaz). And even then, they came up empty, with Alex Freeland grounding into an inning-ending double-play against former Dodgers reliever Luis García with the bases loaded.
Angels shortstop Zach Neto runs the bases after hitting a home run in the first inning Monday night.
(Jessie Alcheh / Associated Press)
Eighth-inning home runs from Shohei Ohtani (his 42nd of the season, and the 100th of his career at his old home stadium in Anaheim) and Max Muncy (a three-run drive inside the right-field foul pole) put the Dodgers on the board at long last.
But it was far too little, much too late — allowing the Angels (57-62) to improve to 4-0 against the Dodgers this season after sweeping a series at Chavez Ravine back in May.
When coupled with Sunday’s maddening loss to Toronto (a defeat that left Roberts outwardly perturbed in his postgame news conference), the last 48 hours have represented another backward step in a Dodgers’ campaign that is quickly growing full of them.
It has zapped whatever momentum was building after the team’s two series-opening victories against the AL East-leading Blue Jays last weekend. It has dropped the club to 12-19 since the Fourth of July, the fifth-worst record in the majors over that span. And, most consequentially, it has opened the door for the Padres (who have won three in a row and five out of six) to potentially take the division lead ahead of their visit to Dodger Stadium on Friday.
The only silver lining: The Dodgers overcame similar struggles last year, doing just enough down the stretch to win the division and march all the way to an unlikely championship.
But they were hoping to avoid such headaches this season, and mount a more enjoyable defense of their title.
With less than two months remaining in the season, that dream has come and gone.
The Dodgers can still win another World Series. But the road to this point has been anything but fun.
The Arizona Diamondbacks designated hitter didn’t swing at the first two pitches he saw from San Diego Padres reliever Mason Miller — a fastball that registered at 102 miles per hour for a ball and an 89-mph slider — with two outs in the bottom of the eighth inning Tuesday night in Phoenix.
The Cuban-American batter then fouled off the next four pitches, three of which were fastballs thrown between 101 and 104 mph. Miller’s seventh pitch of the at-bat was another scorcher, but Gurriel made contact and this time kept the ball in fair territory.
It traveled 439 feet and landed in the left-field stands for a two-run home run. Miller’s pitch was clocked at 103.9 mph, making it the fastest pitch to be hit for a home run since MLB started pitch tracking in 2008.
“It’s something that just happened,” Gurriel said after the game through an interpreter.
Miller said of the pitch: “Location could have been better, for sure. Ultimately, the result is what it is. I’m not going to sit here and regret what pitch I threw. Just got it out over the plate, a little bit high.”
Gurriel’s blast, which left the park at 107.1 mph, tied the game at 5-5. Unfortunately for the Diamondbacks, they couldn’t keep up the momentum against their National League West rivals and eventually lost 10-5 in 11 innings.
“The real meaning was in the time of the game and what it meant to the team to tie the ballgame. That was the most important thing,” Gurriel said of his historic homer. “I mean, unfortunately, it didn’t turn into a win, but that was the most exciting thing.”
It was Gurriel’s second home run of the game — he also hit a two-run homer off Padres starter Yu Darvish in the first inning — and his 14th of the season. Before Tuesday, Gurriel had not hit a home run since July 1.
Gurriel is the ninth player known to hit a home run off a ball thrown at 102 mph or faster and only the second player to do so off a pitch thrown faster than 103 mph. In September, Ian Happ of the Chicago Cubs went yard off a 103.2-mph pitch.
That pitch also happened to be thrown by Miller, who was with the Athletics at the time before being acquired by the Padres at the trade deadline last week. In his second appearance for San Diego, Miller pitched one inning, giving up one hit and a walk with two strikeouts. One of his pitches was clocked at 104.2 mph, the fastest ever tracked for a Padres pitcher.
“It’s a weapon,” Miller said of his fastball after Tuesday’s game. “But you still need to put together an at-bat for the guy, and work with him, as far as his swings and his approach in there.”
The Dodgers are leading the majors in on-base-plus-slugging percentage as an offense this year. They are second in the National League in scoring, and third in team batting average.
They have the league’s top players in hitting (Will Smith batting .324 and Freddie Freeman batting .306) and OPS (Shohei Ohtani at .982 and Smith at .963).
They figure to have several players who will get MVP votes at the end of the season, including the odds-on favorite for the award in Ohtani.
And yet, as the club enters the stretch run of the season, their lineup might be the biggest question mark in their bid to defend last year’s World Series championship. Since the start of July, they have scored the third-fewest runs in the majors, have the second-lowest team batting average and the fourth-lowest OPS.
They stayed relatively quiet at the trade deadline, hopeful a number of struggling superstars would get things going over the campaign’s final two months. But to this point, only Freeman (who endured a two-month slump before heating up again on their recent nine-game trip) has shown tangible signs of a late-season revival.
“If you look at it from the offensive side, as far as our guys, they’ll be the first to tell you they’ve got to perform better and more consistently,” manager Dave Roberts said this past weekend, after utility outfielder Alex Call became the team’s only deadline addition to the lineup. “That’s something that we’re all counting on … Now it’s up to all of us to go out there and do our jobs.”
While that’s true of most hitters in the lineup, all the way down to Andy Pages and (even before his most recent ankle injury flare-up) Tommy Edman, there are three star-level players in particular the Dodgers have been waiting to round back into form.
Here’s a look at the problems plaguing each of them:
Mookie Betts
First 15 games: .304 average, .554 slugging percentage, .954 OPS
Last 87 games: .222 average, .327 slugging percentage, .616 OPS
When asked on Sunday for the umpteenth time this season if he knew what was wrong with Mookie Betts’ swing, Roberts failed to come up with an answer.
“Honestly, no,” Roberts said. “I know that he and the hitting coaches have been working diligently, consistently, intentionally. I think that the first thing, the easiest thing, to say is it’s a mechanical thing. So I guess kind of that’s where he’s at. But also, I do believe that there’s a mental part of it, too, which is sort of beating him down a little bit.”
When Betts was presented with the same question later Sunday afternoon, after running a season-long hitless streak to 17 at-bats and watching his batting average dip to .233, he was left searching for divine intervention.
“I’ve done everything I can possibly do,” he said. “It’s up to God at this point.”
Betts’ struggles are not for a lack of effort. He spends hours in the batting cage before (and sometimes after) almost every game. He has tried mechanical tweaks and mental cues and fundamental drills that in the past would get him back on track.
His approach has largely remained sound, as he ranks in the top 20% of big-leaguers in chase rate, whiff rate and strikeouts percentage, per Baseball Savant’s Statcast data.
And while his bat speed is in the 11th percentile of MLB hitters (and down almost two mph from his 39-homer season in 2023), it’s also about the same as he had last year, when he was still a .289 hitter with 19 home runs (in just 116 games) and a .863 OPS (which only trailed Shohei Ohtani for the best on the team).
“I really don’t know what else to do,” he said. “I don’t have any answers.”
Perhaps the most confounding metric: Betts is in the 99th percentile in “squared-up” rate, a metric that effectively determines when a ball is hit off the sweet spot of the bat.
But, even when Betts does make solid contact, he simply isn’t generating as much power as he usually does — ranking among the bottom third of big-league hitters in average exit velocity and hard-hit percentage; and watching fly balls that used to leave the yard die at the warning track, if they even make it that far.
While he has been a victim of some bad luck (his expected .252 batting average is almost 20 points higher than his actual mark), he has had no choice but to “go back to the drawing board” time and time again this year — gradually grating on his confidence as answers continually fail to appear.
“I don’t know anybody in the world that would have confidence in the stretch that’s going on [for me],” he said. “It sucks when you don’t get stuff done.”
Betts can be a streaky hitter. And the Dodgers’ hope is that, at some point over these final two months, he’ll find something that unlocks more pop in his bat, and go on the kind of heater that can make him an effective producer at the top of the lineup again.
Until that happens, however, questions will persist. About whether his shortstop play is to blame for his offensive decline (a theory multiple rival evaluators have increasingly pointed to of late as a reason for his struggles). About whether age is simply catching up to the soon-to-be 33-year-old veteran. And about whether he will ever be the same hitter he was once, amid a season-long slump almost no one saw coming.
Shohei Ohtani
First 70 games (before resuming pitching): .297 average, 1.034 OPS, 24% strikeout rate
Last 40 games (since resuming pitching): .230 average, .886 OPS, 31% strikeout rate
The easy demarcation line for Ohtani this year has been before and after he returned to pitching in mid-June, with offensive production dropping even as his stuff has ticked up on the mound.
Ohtani has still been a relatively productive hitter since then, continuing to hit home runs at a league-leading pace (he is tied with Kyle Schwarber for the NL lead with 38 on the year).
But he has become a much easier out the last couple months, as well, epitomized first and foremost by his climbing strikeout rate.
An over-aggressive approach would figure to be the easy explanation here. And there have been times, Roberts noted, the slugger appears to get into a “swing mode” that prevents him from laying off bad pitches.
But on the whole this season, Ohtani is actually swinging less often than he did last year, chasing pitches at an almost identical rate and continuing to draw more walks than almost anyone in the majors (his 71 free passes are seventh-most this season).
Ohtani’s problem has been an increase in swing-and-miss, with the reigning MVP coming up empty on more than one-third of his hacks.
It might simply be a byproduct of the added physical workload he has taken on since resuming two-way duties. But he has insisted such problems remain fixable, citing a lack of balance and consistency in his swing mechanics.
Like Betts, Ohtani can also be prone to more extreme highs and lows over the course of a year. Last season, for example, he hit just .235 with an .886 OPS in August, before turning around in September and batting .393 with a 1.225 OPS.
The Dodgers could use another late-season tear like that again this term. Whether he can do it while also ramping up as a pitcher looms as one of the biggest questions facing the Dodgers down the stretch this year.
Teoscar Hernández
First 33 games (pre-groin strain): .315 average, nine home runs, .933 OPS, 18% strikeout rate
Last 57 games (post-groin strain): .211 average, seven home runs, .619 OPS, 28% strikeout rate
Hernández’s midseason drop-off is perhaps the easiest to explain of any recently scuffling Dodgers hitter.
Before suffering a groin/adductor strain in early May, he was on an All-Star (and potentially even MVP-caliber) pace after re-signing with the Dodgers in the offseason.
Since then, however, the 32-year-old simply hasn’t looked the same — both at the plate, where he hasn’t been able to drive the ball as he usually does, and in the field, where his range has been clearly limited.
To that end, a foul ball he took off his foot last month hasn’t helped matters either.
There have been some recent signs that Hernández is getting healthy again. His slugging percentage has started to tick back up since getting a week off for the All-Star break. He has had more hard contact, especially to center and the opposite field.
“At the beginning [after my injury] it was a little hard,” Hernández said after hitting home runs in consecutive games at Fenway Park last week. “First I got my groin, then I got the foul off my foot. Couldn’t put a lot of weight [on it] for like two weeks. Thank God there was the break in there. I got those four days off, going through that and getting some treatment, getting some rest. And finally feel like myself again.”
But, it still hasn’t resulted in a total reversal of fortunes, with Hernández finishing the road trip going just five-for-25 with nine strikeouts and only one extra-base hit.
Last year, Hernández’s ability to be a run-producer behind the Dodgers’ star trio of hitters was crucial to both their regular-season and postseason offensive success. Lately, though, he has been more strikeout-prone and less opportunistic at the plate, contributing to a string of frustrating recent defeats marked by squandered chances in leverage opportunities.
“He’s bearing down, and he’s not trying to give at-bats away,” Roberts said. “He’s grinding.”
Much like the Dodgers’ other scuffling stars, the team will need him to fully snap out of it, and live up once again to the expectations the club had for him and the lineup at large.
Aaron Civale pitched one-hit ball into the seventh inning and the Chicago White Sox beat the Angels 1-0 on Saturday night to surpass their win total from last season.
Chicago improved to 42-69 with its 10th win in 14 games since the All-Star break. It finished with a 41-121 record in 2024, breaking the modern major league record for most losses in a season.
The White Sox scored their only run on Kyle Teel’s RBI single in the second against Kyle Hendricks (6-8). Teel drove in Luis Robert Jr., who reached on a leadoff single.
Civale (3-6) struck out eight in 6⅓ innings. He is 2-0 in his last three starts, yielding an unearned run and seven hits in 17⅓ innings.
The Angels (53-58) got their only hit when Zach Neto beat out a slow roller down the third base line leading off the fourth. It was the team’s third consecutive loss. Nolan Schanuel walked after Neto’s hit. But Civale retired the next three batters.
Mike Trout sat out a second straight game after he missed Friday’s series opener with illness.
Brandon Eisert retired each of his five batters, and Jordan Leasure finished the one-hitter for his third save in seven opportunities.
Brooks Baldwin had two of Chicago’s six hits.
The White Sox (42-69) played without infielder Miguel Vargas, who was scratched because of a left oblique strain.
Andrew Benintendi had a double and a home run, Lenyn Sosa also homered among his two hits, and the Chicago White Sox beat the Angels 6-3 on Friday night.
White Sox starter Shane Smith gave up two runs and two hits while striking out four over 4⅓ innings in his first start since July 11 following a stint on the 15-day injured list. Jordan Leasure (4-6) earned the win in relief, striking out four in 1⅔ innings.
Benintendi and Sosa each hit solo home runs in the second inning off Angels starter Tyler Anderson (2-7), and Luis Robert Jr. had a sacrifice fly drove Miguel Vargas home in the fourth inning to make it 3-0.
Gustavo Campero‘s second home run of the year, a two-run blast to deep center field in the fifth, got the Angels within one, but Colson Montgomery answered with a deep homer of his own in the sixth inning.
Campero’s baserunning error prevented the game-tying run from scoring in the seventh, ending what was a bases-loaded, one-out threat for the Angels.
Logan O’Hoppe scored on Zach Neto‘s sacrifice fly to bring the Angels within one again, and Nolan Schanuel appeared to drive in Travis D’Arnaud with a two-out single, but Campero was thrown out at third prior to d’Arnaud crossing the plate.
Sosa had an RBI single in the eighth and Josh Rojas added a solo homer in the ninth.
Steven Wilson got the last six outs for his second save of the year for Chicago (41-69).
Mike Trout did not play for the Angels (53-57) because of illness.
Montgomery continued his second-half tear with a solo home run, which represented his 18th RBI since the All-Star break. He is now tied with Philadelphia’s Kyle Schwarber for the most RBIs since the break.
Then, in a serendipitous twist, it gave him a lightning-bulb epiphany about his recently ailing swing.
At the end of a long day during last week’s homestand — when Freeman was hit by a pitch on July 20, immediately removed from the game to get an X-ray, then informed he somehow hadn’t sustained serious injury — manager Dave Roberts shared with the first baseman a comical video edit he had received from a friend. A light reprieve at the end of a stressful day.
In it, the swing of Freeman’s walk-off grand slam in last year’s World Series was incorporated into a spin-off of the viral Coldplay kiss cam video (yes, that Coldplay kiss cam).
Freeman got a chuckle out of the clip.
But, while rewatching his Fall Classic moment, he also made an observation about his iconic swing.
On that night last October, Freeman noticed, “I’m more in my front ankle,” he later said — a subtle, but profound, contrast to how he had been swinging the bat amid a two-month cold spell he was mired in at the time.
So, for the rest of that night, Freeman thought about the difference. He went into the Dodgers’ batting cages the next afternoon focused on making a change.
“It’s a different thought of being in your legs when you’re hitting,” said Freeman, who had started the season batting .371 over his first 38 games, before slumping to a .232 mark over his next 49 contests. “It’s just more [about leaning] into my front ankle. It’s helping me be on time and on top [of the ball].”
“We’ll see,” he added with a chuckle, “how it goes in the game.”
Ten games later, it seems to be going pretty well.
Since making the tweak on July 21, Freeman is 14 for 39 (.359 average) with two home runs, four extra base hits, 10 RBIs and (most importantly) a renewed confidence at the plate.
After collecting his first three-hit game in a month Tuesday in Cincinnati, then his first home run in all of July the next evening, he stayed hot in the Dodgers’ series-opening 5-0 defeat of the Tampa Bay Rays on Friday, whacking a two-run double in the first inning and a solo home run in the fifth in front of a crowd of 10,046 at Steinbrenner Field (the New York Yankees’ spring training park serving as the Rays’ temporary home).
“That visual helped him kind of tap into something,” Roberts laughed recently of Freeman’s post-meme swing adjustment. “He is early, for a change. Versus being late, chasing.”
Freeman’s turnaround is something the Dodgers — who also got six scoreless innings out of Clayton Kershaw on Friday, lowering his season earned-run average to 3.29 in 13 starts — need out of several superstar sluggers over the final two months of the season.
Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw delivers during a 5-0 win over the Tampa Bay Rays on Friday.
(Jason Behnken / Associated Press)
During Thursday’s trade deadline, the team didn’t splurge on big-name acquisitions. The only addition they made to their recently slumping lineup (which ranked 28th in the majors in scoring during July) was versatile outfielder Alex Call from the Washington Nationals.
Instead, both Roberts and club executives have preached of late, the team is banking on players like Mookie Betts (who is batting .237), Teoscar Hernández (who has hit .215 since returning from an adductor strain in May), Tommy Edman (who has hit .210 since returning from an ankle injury in May) and even Shohei Ohtani (who leads the National League in home runs, but is batting only .221 since resuming pitching duties in June) to play up to their typical, potent standards.
“I think if you look at it from the offensive side, as far as our guys, they’ll be the first to tell you they’ve got to perform better and more consistently,” Roberts said. “That’s something that we’re all counting on.”
For much of the summer, Freeman had been squarely in that group, as well.
His recent Coldplay-inspired rebound, the club hopes, will be one of many that spark an offensive surge down the stretch this year.
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.”
The Dodgers’ recently slumping offense was better Saturday night.
But for a team that has struggled to gain traction and string together wins for almost a month, even a seven-run, 10-hit performance wasn’t quite enough.
In an 8-7 loss to the Milwaukee Brewers, the Dodgers put a badly-needed crooked number on the board early, scoring four runs in the bottom of the third to answer the Brewers four-run rally in the top half of the inning.
The Dodgers manufactured another run in the sixth, keeping the game close on a night Emmet Sheehan struggled in a season-worst start and the bullpen yielded three costly runs late. They even hit back-to-back home runs in the eighth, trimming what had grown to a three-run deficit back to one.
But every time it seemed like they were truly ready to break out, like their long-slumbering lineup was about to roar back to life, the Dodgers still came up ever-frustratingly short.
And no sequence epitomized those headaches like the end of the third.
After a Shohei Ohtani two-run homer, a Teoscar Hernández RBI double and a run-scoring wild pitch from Brewers starter Freddy Peralta, the Dodgers had the go-ahead run at third with no outs. They were 90 feet away from flipping the momentum entirely, and completing the kind of ruthless offensive onslaught that has evaded their $400-million roster for the last several weeks.
But then, in an immediate return to their uninspired form of late, the lineup went missing, squandering the opportunity with three quick outs — moments before the Brewers retook a lead their premium pitching staff wouldn’t again relinquish.
So goes life for the Dodgers these days, when even a largely productive day at the plate couldn’t prevent another series defeat to the Brewers or a ninth overall loss in their last 11 games.
Saturday could have been a more profound breakthrough. A game of not just incremental progress, but a total offensive turnaround.
Ohtani had a three-RBI day, starting with his towering 448-foot opposite-field blast. Hernández’s double was one of the best swings he has taken in the last couple months, a line drive into the right-center field gap that one-hopped off the wall. Tommy Edman broke an 0-for-29 skid with a sixth-inning single and eighth-inning home run. Miguel Rojas, one of the few who has impressed during the Dodgers’ recent struggles, followed Edman’s solo blast with one of his own in the next at-bat, completing a two-hit night that also included a walk.
But every time the Dodgers put the Brewers on the ropes, they failed to land the necessary knockout blow.
In a game they needed their lineup to pick up the slack left by a lackluster pitching performance, they repeatedly ran out of rope.
On the verge of taking the lead in the third, the Dodgers instead watched Andy Pages take a called third strike (which he reacted angrily to, despite the pitch being well in the zone), Michael Conforto ground out against a drawn-in infield and Edman hit a can of corn to left to retire the side.
The 4-4 tie was broken in the next inning, when Isaac Collins hit a leadoff home run over the short wall in right field to chase Dodgers starter Emmet Sheehan from the game.
Trailing by two in the sixth, the Dodgers threatened again. Edman and Rojas both singled, setting up Ohtani for an RBI knock in left field. But then Will Smith grounded out to second to retire the side.
The final tease came in the eighth, after the Brewers opened up an 8-5 lead.
Edman lifted his home run to the left-field bullpen. Rojas went deep on a similar trajectory.
That brought up Ohtani, representing the potential tying run. But he watched a soaring fly ball die at the warning track in center.
Close, but not enough. Too little, once again coming frustratingly too late.
The bats, of course, were not the Dodgers’ primary problem Saturday.
Sheehan saw his recently promising return from Tommy John surgery derailed in a five-run, three-plus inning outing. During the Brewers’ four-run third, he missed wildly with an array of breaking pitches, and was punished for several sliders that failed to induce a whiff.
The defense wasn’t sharp either, with both Hernández and Pages failing to cut off balls in the gaps at various points.
And generally, the Dodgers have reverted to the overall shoddy play that led to a seven-game losing streak shortly before the All-Star break (three of which came in Milwaukee to the Brewers, who can complete a six-game season sweep of the Dodgers on Sunday).
But the lack of consistently timely offense remains the most confounding issue for the Dodgers.
That was the case even before the game, when manager Dave Roberts gave Mookie Betts — the most glaring underperformer among Dodgers hitters this season — a day off just two games into the second half in hopes it would allow him to clear his mind and work on his swing.
It felt just as prescient in the aftermath of yet another defeat, with the team still searching for a winning formula amid its most disappointing stretch of the year.
PHILADELPHIA — Kyle Schwarber hit a grand slam in the sixth inning and Bryce Harper capped the scoring with a two-run homer in the eighth, carrying the Philadelphia Phillies to a 9-5 win over the Angels on Saturday night.
Schwarber’s shot to right field off reliever José Fermin was his eighth career grand slam and 32nd homer of the season.
Taylor Ward and Jo Adell hit back-to-back home runs for the Angels in the fourth inning for a 3-1 lead that wouldn’t stand after Angels starter Yusei Kikuchi left after five solid innings.
The Phillies ruined what could have been a big inning in the first, when Schwarber and Trea Turner got caught in rundowns and were tagged out on the same grounder by Harper. Nick Castellanos followed that with a two-out, RBI single for a 1-0 lead.
The Angels turned it around in the fourth on Ward’s and Adell’s home runs. Zach Neto also plated a run with a single that inning but the Angels left the bases loaded.
The Phillies got a run back on Turner’s RBI single in the fifth. Yoan Moncada hit a home run in the sixth to restore a two-run Angels lead.
Seth Johnson (1-0) struck out two in one inning of work. Sam Bachman (2-3) took the loss.
Schwarber’s 32nd homer moved him into a tie for second in the National League with the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani before Ohtani hit his 33rd Saturday night. Arizona’s Eugenio Suárez hit two home runs Saturday, which gave him 33.
One of the biggest moments from the game, however, actually occurred 51 years, three months and one week earlier. That’s when the legendary Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth‘s longstanding MLB record with his 715th home run — a milestone event that was re-created in dramatic fashion after the sixth inning Tuesday night (July 15, a.k.a, 7/15) at Truist Park in Atlanta.
The actual milestone event took place about 10 miles from there on April 8, 1974, when Aaron and the Atlanta Braves hosted the Dodgers at the since-demolished Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium. A crowd of 53,775 was on hand, with millions more watching on national TV, when Aaron launched a fourth-inning pitch by Al Downing over the left-center-field wall to make baseball history.
This week, a crowd of 41,176 — again with millions more watching on TV or streaming — witnessed the moment come back to life through video and audio clips (yep, that’s legendary Dodgers announcer Vin Scully you hear, along with Braves announcer Milo Hamilton), pyrotechnics and lots of modern technology.
It was really a sight to behold as Aaron and the others somehow appeared on the field as the events unfolded just like they did more than a half-century ago. A firework was launched from home plate and scorched through the air marking the trajectory of Aaron’s landmark blast. Lighted footprints traced the Hall of Famer’s every step around the basepath.
The tribute included part of Scully’s call from that day. “What a marvelous moment for baseball,” he said, “what a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia, what a marvelous moment for the country and the world.”
(Although it wasn’t included in the tribute, Scully went on to explain one of the reasons the moment was so significant: “A Black man is getting a standing ovation in the Deep South for breaking a record of an all-time baseball idol. And it is a great moment for all of us, and particularly for Henry Aaron.”)
Hank Aaron’s historic 715th home run.
Aaron died in 2021 at age 86, but his wife Billye Aaron was on hand for the festivities.
“I think people can look at me and say, ‘He was a great baseball player, but he was even a greater human being,’” Aaron said in a clip that played at the end of the tribute.
Technically, there was no winning pitcher in Major League Baseball’s 95th All-Star Game.
The man who gave up the night’s biggest swings, however, was probably as deserving as any.
As the American League stormed back from a 6-0 deficit in Tuesday’s Midsummer Classic, a rarely contemplated reality started to dawn in both dugouts.
Three years ago, MLB changed its rules for how to break ties in its annual marquee event, instituting a home run “swing-off” to be conducted at the conclusion of the ninth inning. Each team selected three players, who each got three swings. Whichever team hit the most home runs in those nine swings wins the game.
It was penalty kicks for baseball. A hockey shootout on the diamond.
The only difference, though, was that this sport’s version required a coach to take part in the action.
Enter Dino Ebel — veteran Dodgers’ third base coach — and, now, victorious pitcher in the inaugural All-Star Game swing-off.
“What an exciting moment, I think, for baseball, for all the people that stayed, who watched on television, everything,” Ebel said, after teeing up the NL hitters for a 4-3 win in the home run swing-off, and a 7-6 win overall in the All-Star Game.
“That was pretty awesome to be a part of … I had like 10 throws just to get loose. And then it’s like, ‘Let’s bring it on.’ ”
Indeed, in an event that can often go stale once starters get removed in the early innings, the finish to Tuesday’s game energized both the stands and the dugouts, with players from both teams emptying onto the field and wildly cheering each swing.
“That was like the baseball version of a shootout or extra time,” said Philadelphia Phillies star Kyle Schwarber, who went three for three in his turn at the plate to ultimately lift the NL to the win, and earn All-Star Game MVP honors. “It was really fun. I credit the guys on our side, who were really into it.”
“First time in history we got to do this,” added Dodgers skipper Dave Roberts, who was previously 0-3 as an All-Star Game manager before Tuesday’s dramatic conclusion. “I think it played pretty well tonight.”
Perhaps the greatest twist: In the middle of it all was Ebel, a 59-year-old base coach who, as a utility infielder from 1988 to 1994 in the Dodgers’ minor-league system, never advanced past triple A.
In addition to his duties as third base coach and outfield instructor for the Dodgers, Ebel is something of a batting practice specialist these days. He’s thrown it on a daily basis to Dodgers hitters ever since the team hired him in 2019, and as a staff member with the Angels for years before that. He has pitched for four different players in the Home Run Derby, including Albert Pujols, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Teoscar Hernández’s win in Texas last year.
Kyle Schwarber celebrates with teammates after the NL won the All-Star Game tiebreaker.
(Brynn Anderson / Associated Press)
Ebel and Schwarber even had previous history of doing batting practice together, back when Ebel was a coach on Team USA’s 2023 World Baseball Classic squad two years prior.
“He’s got great BP,” Schwarber said. “A lot of credit goes to him, just kind of getting thrown into the firestorm there and not being rattled by it, being able to keep pumping really good strikes to us.”
By the time Schwarber came up in the second round of the swing-off, the NL was in somewhat dicey position. Brent Rooker of the A’s started the event off with two home runs for the AL. Kyle Stowers of the Miami Marlins and Randy Arozarena of the Seattle Mariners each traded one, leaving the AL ahead 3-1.
And while Schwarber is one of the league’s most feared sluggers, with 30 long balls this year and 314 in his career, he said he rarely takes actual batting practice on the field, leaving him admittedly “a little nervous” as strolled to the dish.
“I think the first swing was kind of the big one,” Schwarber said. “I was just really trying to hit a line drive, versus trying to hit the home run. Usually, that tends to work out — especially in games.”
As Schwarber was preparing for his round, he and Ebel discussed where exactly he wanted the ball thrown.
“I’m gonna go left-center to center field,” Schwarber told Ebel. “So just throw it down the middle.”
Three thunderous swings later, Schwarber had put the NL in front with three towering blasts.
Dodgers third base coach Dino Ebel was the man of the moment at the All-Star Game.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
“This was putting it more on the line,” Ebel said of Tuesday’s format, which unlike the Home Run Derby or daily BP, required more patience and precision with each player permitted only three swings. “Like right now, you’re gonna win it or you’re gonna lose it. And we won it.”
Indeed, when the Tampa Bay Rays’ Jonathan Aranda suffered an 0-fer that culminated in a pop-up, the NL team swarmed Schwarber, who then sought out Ebel and embraced him with a hug.
“A lot of credit goes to him for the National League bringing it home,” Schwarber reiterated.
“Put a ‘W’ next to Dino’s name in the paper,” Roberts echoed. “Dino should get the win, absolutely.”
This week was memorable for Ebel even before Tuesday’s swing-off.
On Sunday morning, he flew home early from the Dodgers’ road series in San Francisco to be with his son, Brady, for the MLB draft. From their living room, the Ebel family celebrated after Brady was selected 32nd overall by the Milwaukee Brewers, then packed up and headed for Ontario International Airport to catch a red-eye flight Sunday for Atlanta.
And after getting in early on Monday morning, Ebel had been going nonstop around All-Star festivities, joining his fellow Dodgers coaches (who made up the honorary NL staff after winning the pennant last year) for media appearances, throwing batting practice in a pre-Home Run Derby workout on Monday and, as it turned out, doing it again with Tuesday’s game in the balance.
“It’s pretty high adrenaline going for me right now,” Ebel said from the NL clubhouse postgame. “I haven’t gotten too much sleep. But right now, I feel like I’ve slept for days. Because I’m wired up.”
ATLANTA — The hierarchy of stars was obvious even in the table arrangements.
At an All-Star Game media day event on Monday at the Roxy Coca-Cola Theater in Atlanta, the Dodgers’ five All-Star representatives were in the same area of the large venue.
In the first row, basking under large spotlights near an elevated stage, Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman and Clayton Kershaw were positioned front and center, expected to attract so many reporters that retractable ropes lined the perimeter of their podiums.
And even then, where Yamamoto’s media contingent stretched several rows deep, Smith’s rarely swelled beyond a few people.
He was a third-time All-Star, National League starter and batting title contender — once again relegated to the background of the sport’s public consciousness.
“He’s up there as far as being overlooked,” Dodgers manager and NL All-Star skipper Dave Roberts said of his ever-present but easily forgotten backstop. “You know what you’re going to get, but you probably don’t appreciate it as much as you should.”
Appreciated, Smith has not been this year. Not fully, at the very least.
Entering the All-Star break, the 30-year-old slugger is a distant leader in the NL batting race, sporting a .323 mark that outpaces the next closest qualified hitter (his recently slumping teammate, Freeman) by a whopping 26 points.
Smith also has 12 home runs, 46 RBIs, and a .965 OPS (which trails only his two-way teammate, Ohtani) in addition to a 15% walk rate (fifth-best in the league).
According to Fangraphs’ all-encompassing wRC+ metric, only Yankees superstar Aaron Judge and Mariners catcher Cal Raleigh have been more productive hitters this season.
And he’s done it all while shepherding a banged-up Dodgers pitching staff, helping keep the team atop the NL West despite it having used 35 different arms through the first half of the year.
“For him to go out there, catching these guys, having your team in first place, and then you’re hitting .325, I don’t think people are paying attention to that,” Freeman said Monday, peering through a forest of reporters to catch a glimpse of Smith over his shoulder. “People are gonna tune into the All-Star Game, they’ll throw his numbers up on the TV, and they’re gonna be like, ‘Whoa, that’s a really good season.’”
But for as well as Smith has played, the seven-year veteran remains somewhat obscured from the public spotlight.
He is, as Roberts jokingly puts it, the most “vanilla” of the team’s collection of spotlight talent. He doesn’t have jaw-dropping highlights like Ohtani. He doesn’t have a signature World Series moment such as Freeman. He isn’t excelling at a new position such as Mookie Betts. And even when he is swarmed by reporters around the ballpark, it’s usually to field questions about catching the Dodgers’ star Japanese trio of Ohtani, Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki.
“Honestly, I don’t really care,” he said Monday. “That stuff has never been important to me. Being ‘the guy’ or not, any of that. I show up, play baseball every day, try to help the team win, try to be a good teammate, try to lead the pitchers, and ultimately try to win a World Series every year. That’s what’s important to me.”
This year, Smith was voted an All-Star starter for the first time by fans. But, he isn’t even the most talked about catcher at this week’s festivities in Atlanta, overshadowed again by Raleigh and his 38 first-half home runs — making the slugger affectionately known as “Big Dumper,” who also won the Home Run Derby on Monday night, the best current catcher in baseball in the eyes of many around the sport.
“Will’s just always kind of really under the radar, for whatever reason,” Kershaw said. “He’s been unbelievable for us, at a position that’s really important and very demanding.”
For Smith, the true joy of this year has simply been his health.
Two years ago, he slumped mightily in the second half of 2023 (finishing the year with a .797 OPS) while battling a broken rib he had suffered that April. This spring, Roberts revealed that Smith’s underwhelming performance in 2024 (when he posted more career lows with a .248 average and .760 OPS) was hampered by an ankle injury that again plagued his second-half performance.
“The last couple years, I had some, not major things, but some tough injuries,” Smith said. “But that’s my decision to play through them.”
Now, however, he is back at full physical capacity, allowing him to work counts (he has almost as many walks, 45, as strikeouts, 55), punish fastballs (a pitch he struggled against the last two years) and maintain the most consistent production of any hitter in the Dodgers’ juggernaut lineup.
“I just feel like I have a really good understanding of my swing right now,” Smith said. “It’s a long season, it comes and goes. But for whatever reason this year, I’ve been able to keep it more than I haven’t. So that’s been fun. Credit to the hitting coaches as well for keeping me in that spot. I just have a really good understanding of what I’m doing up there.”
In his typically modest fashion, Smith sidestepped a question about his chances of winning the batting title, something no catcher has done since Buster Posey in 2012.
“I’ve never been one to chase awards or anything,” he said. “I think when you do that, it probably doesn’t go your way, you put too much pressure [on yourself]. So just trying to have one good at-bat at a time, help the team win that day.”
At his current pace, he could be a recipient for MVP votes for the first time in his career as well, although the Dodgers’ careful management of his playing time has left him ranked ninth in the NL in wins above replacement to this point, according to Fangraphs.
“What he’s doing is Buster Posey-ish, Joe Mauer-ish,” Freeman said, citing the only other backstop this century with a batting title (Mauer won three with Minnesota in the late 2000s). “When you’re leading the league in hitting and you’re catching, it’s really hard to do. You’re calling games. It’s almost like they’re more worried about putting up a zero than they are about hitting.”
In time, Freeman believes, Smith’s Q-rating will continue to rise, especially if he keeps replicating the kind of numbers he has posted this season.
“I think it just takes maybe a couple times [being here at the All-Star Game],” Freeman said. “We all know in L.A. how special he is. Obviously, the front office extended him 10 years. So, hopefully now that he’s starting in the All-Star Game, he’s gonna get that national recognition.”
But even if he doesn’t, he hardly seems to be bothered by his second-tier (and, on Monday, second-row) status.
“I just think he’s resolved to not having to be at the forefront,” Roberts said. “He doesn’t ever self-promote. He doesn’t need notoriety or attention. He just wants to win. Some players thrive on getting attention. He’s certainly not one of those guys.”
