LOS ANGELES — In the middle of the worst stretch of the worst season of his career, Mookie Betts looked back. The Los Angeles Dodgers shortstop searched back to his earliest days in the Boston Red Sox system, trying to reteach himself a swing that turned him into an MVP and helped him slug 30 home runs in a season four different times despite registering officially at 5-foot-10 and 180 pounds.
Betts tried so much during this prolonged season-long offensive slump.
“It’s up to God at this point,” he said in the midst of a hitless stretch last week that extended to 22 at-bats, the longest of his career.
“I’ve never been this bad for this long,” he said earlier this month.
Every number would bear that out. So digging back into the past was worth a shot. Everything was worth trying. An old friend, former Dodgers slugger J.D. Martinez, even stopped by while the team was in Tampa for encouragement and a few swing tips; Betts went hitless that series.
The freefall has continued through August. He hasn’t hit lower than second in the Dodgers’ lineup despite his struggles. With that, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts has turned it into an almost daily reminder: His position in the batting order was a statement of his belief that his superstar could turn it around.
Betts is starting to show signs that Roberts’ faith may be well-placed. He broke that hitless stretch with a three-hit game on Tuesday night against the Cardinals. He added a double Wednesday afternoon. Then came Friday, when he laced his first home run in more than a month to power the Dodgers to a 5-1 win over the Toronto Blue Jays, uncorking the kind of swing he’s searched for all year.
His latest solution: not worrying about his season turning around.
“This season’s over,” Betts said. “My season’s kind of over. We’re going to have to chalk that up for not a great season.”
Of course, it’s not as simple as Betts plunging himself into the deepest depths of his slump. Rather, it’s a reframing of his mindset.
“But I can go out and help the boys win every night, do something, get an RBI, make a play, do something that — I’m going to have to shift my focus there,” Betts said. “Obviously everyone wants to have great seasons, but it’s a lot easier when you just don’t worry about the season. You just worry about game to game. I’ll take this perspective for the rest of my career.”
It is still too early to declare Betts back, as meaningful as that would be to a Dodgers team whose dominant lineup has instead been dormant for more than a month. Friday was another positive step. He did what he should in the first inning, when Max Scherzer served up a second consecutive fastball over the plate and Betts laced it up the middle for a single — rather than serve up the spinners and flares that he’d so often hit when his swing has been off-kilter.
Perhaps the added confidence of a good week channeled his aggression by the time Betts came to the plate in the fifth inning. Shohei Ohtani had extended the Dodgers’ half by pummeling a knee-high slider for an automatic double. When Betts saw the same pitch, he jumped on it, hooking it to left field for his first home run since July 5.
“I think that obviously there’s a mechanical piece that is real, that he feels something,” Roberts said. “But I think for me, from my vantage point, I just think there’s a lot more confidence, conviction in the swings. When the ball’s in the hitting zone, he’s squaring it up.”
He’s struggled to barrel up baseballs for much of this season but looked like the Betts the Dodgers know, as the shortstop got a ground ball in play to bring home another run when the club broke the game open a little in the seventh inning.
Betts’ excellence carried the night on an evening all about the historic starting pitching matchup. The fifth career matchup between Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw (nearly 17 years after their first) could very well be their last, pitting the two most recent entrants into the 20-person, 3,000-strikeout club as each grayed man looked to show what they’ve still got for their respective contenders. The two shared a clubhouse when Scherzer reached 3,000 as a Dodger in 2021, and have shared a unique mini fraternity with Justin Verlander as the three have jostled for the title as the best pitcher of their generation.
“I got to play with him, I got to compete against him, basically our whole careers,” Kershaw said after meeting Scherzer in the dugout following the game and exchanging signed jerseys. “I think it is really cool that we got to do this in our first year, and I don’t know if it’s our last year, but toward the end, for sure. It’s been a fun ride to get to watch him and Verlander, and to get to compete against him tonight was a lot of fun.”
Kershaw had to battle traffic throughout, requiring a diving catch from Betts to start a double play that helped keep the damage in an arduous second inning to one run. It was the only tally Kershaw would wind up allowing as he matched Scherzer for six innings.
“He pitched his butt off,” Scherzer said.
Ultimately, it was Betts’ swing off Scherzer that swung the game for good — and provided the Dodgers their most encouraging sign.
“You see the progress,” Kershaw said of Betts. “Everybody in this clubhouse sees how hard Mook’s working. He’s in the cage all the time … He gets going, this lineup will get scary really fast.”
Betts has gotten his OPS back up to .680. It will still be a while before he could get it to somewhere palatable. Not that it matters. But for a Dodgers team that woke up Friday with its smallest division lead since June 15, it’s a welcome sight. For Friday, it was a step forward in a positive week.
“Getting small wins and playing to win each each night, contributing, versus trying to chase a season where you’re not kind of realizing your career numbers,” Roberts said. “I think that is freeing, and that’s growth from him, and maturity. But I do feel that’s the best way to kind of go about the last two months of the season.”
(Photo: Katelyn Mulcahy / Getty Images)