SAN DIEGO – First theory: Mookie Betts was done in by bad habits.
That’s how Los Angeles Dodgers hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc saw it. Betts was experimenting toward the end of the regular season, as he is wont to do, and certain troublesome patterns formed.
What were his bad habits?
“I don’t really want to get into it,” Van Scoyoc said. “I don’t want to expose anything that might lead to holes that teams figure out.”
Same question for Mookie, then: What were you doing so wrong?
“That’s what I was trying to figure out,” said Betts, who hit a first-inning homer Wednesday night to spark the Dodgers’ 8-0 victory and help force a winner-take-all Game 5 of their Division Series against the San Diego Padres.
“Everything was fine all season. In June” – before Betts fractured his left hand and spent nearly two months on the injured list, “everything was fine. Then all of a sudden postseason comes . . .
“I don’t know what changes. The game doesn’t bother me. It’s the same game. Maybe just a bad series here and a bad series there and I let it just linger instead of still staying confident. It’s hard to stay confident when you keep getting hit in the mouth all the time.”
Betts was getting hit in the mouth, all right. In the first two games of this series he went 0-for-6, extending his postseason slump to 0-for-22 and 3-for-44. His teammate, Kiké Hernández, contends one postseason does not bleed into another. Yet it was sure looking that way until Betts changed the discussion in Games 3 and 4, going 4-for-9 with two homers.
For a slumping hitter, nothing comes easy. Betts experienced almost a comical form of hitting anguish, depositing balls over the left-field wall in three consecutive games, but nearly ending up with only one home run.
In Game 2, Padres left fielder Jurickson Profar robbed Betts. In Game 3, Profar almost repeated the feat. Betts, convinced he had made another out, turned and started running toward the dugout, exasperated. Once he saw the ball actually cleared the left-field wall, he was safe to begin a home-run trot.
In Game 4, Betts was at it again in the first. Only this time, he hit a relative no-doubter to left-center off Padres right-hander Dylan Cease. His homer gave the Dodgers the lead, and eight relievers then combined for a seven-hit shutout.
NLDS Game 2: Mookie Betts robbed of a HR
NLDS Game 3: Mookie Betts HR
NLDS Game 4: Mookie Betts HR#Postseason pic.twitter.com/uavKT5J50f— MLB (@MLB) October 10, 2024
“The first one, that was in the midst of the 0-for-whatever, so that was really deflating,” Betts told the MLB on Fox postgame crew. “And then (Tuesday) I got to see one fall. I felt kind of like Steph Curry a little bit. I just needed to see one go in and then I knew I could do it.”
Another theory: Betts found the answer during the Dodgers’ off-day workout Monday in San Diego, where he said he took 300 to 400 swings.
Betts, while peeling off his uniform at his locker, shot that one down as well.
“No, not really,” he said. “Maybe I thought it would help me feel better. But there’s no substitute for doing stuff in the game. Maybe it was just seeing one fall and gaining confidence from that.”
His home run off Padres righty Mike King in Game 3 was the first one to fall. Betts followed that with a single in the third inning, preceding Teoscar Hernández’s grand slam. Then, with Freddie Freeman out of the lineup in Game 4, he again produced in his first two at-bats, delivering a homer and RBI single.
Finally, results.
“The whole thing comes from, I just want to do my part helping the team. I don’t want to do more,” Betts said. “I understand where we are. I know I’m a big part of it. I get it.
“I’m not trying to do Shohei’s job or anybody else’s job. I just want to do Mookie’s job. I wasn’t doing it. That’s where the frustration was coming from. I just wasn’t helping us.”
So, 300 to 400 swings one day, and as many swings as he might need the next. Infielder/outfielder Tommy Edman is relatively new to the Dodgers, joining the team from the injured list Aug. 19 after arriving from the St. Louis Cardinals in a deadline trade.
The first thing he noticed about Betts was that he never stops.
“He’s one of the hardest-working guys I’ve ever played with,” said Edman, a six-year veteran. “There will be times when he’ll be taking a bunch of swings in the cage and I’m like, ‘Dude, your swing looks great to me.’ And he’s like, ‘Nah, it doesn’t feel right.’ His standard is just so high.”
Betts, notoriously hard on himself, is baseball’s version of a genius chasing perfection. Van Scoyoc said Betts can be too curious at times, experimenting with new ideas that get him off track. But Betts bristles at the suggestion of approaching his craft any other way.
“I don’t care about overdoing it,” he said in the postgame interview room. “I’d rather overdo it than not give effort.”
Rogers Hornsby once said, “People ask me what do in winter when there’s no baseball. I’ll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.”
Here’s Betts, speaking in almost the same cadence, talking about his work habits:
“Pretty much as soon as I get to the park I’m in the cage and I don’t leave until I go back on the field. And I come back inside and I hit some more.”
A final theory: Postseason sample sizes are small. Give a great hitter enough chances, and he’ll figure it out.
Case in point: Barry Bonds. In his first five postseasons, Bonds batted .196 with a .618 OPS and only one home run in 97 at-bats. Then came 2002. By then, Bonds might have been benefiting from his alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs. Still, his slash line from that postseason is staggering: .356/.581/978. A tidy 1.559 OPS, including 27 walks – 13 intentional – and eight homers in 45 at-bats.
Aaron Judge, perhaps the closest thing to Bonds in today’s game, is 1-for-11 with no homers this postseason, and a career .203 hitter in October with a .748 OPS. While his postseason slump might not end Thursday, as Judge’s New York Yankees try to close out the Kansas City Royals, it will last only so long.
Which is pretty much how the Dodgers viewed the situation with Betts.
“I know everyone wants to harp on certain things, but he’s Mookie Betts for a reason,” Freeman said.
Max Muncy was even more to the point.
“Now that he’s had a couple of hits, he can get back to being Mookie Betts, which is a guy that’s still getting paid $400 million.”
Actually, it’s $365 million, but who’s counting? Contracts of that magnitude produce greater expectations. And Betts, aside from his strong October performance in the shortened 2020 season, mostly has been a postseason flop.
Maybe not for much longer. Van Scoyoc initially saw progress in Monday’s workout, in Betts’ move to the ball, the way the ball came off his bat. “That reinforced it for him, gave him the confidence it can happen again,” Van Scoyoc said.
Betts admits some of the challenge, maybe most of it, is mental. Teoscar Hernández said Betts was chasing hits in an effort to boost his season averages, rather than focus on taking good at-bats, making good contact. Perhaps not surprisingly, his results only got worse.
Van Scoyoc said a turning point occurred when Betts accepted his bad habits and worked through them, trying new concepts along the way. Hitters often struggle to strike the right balance between change and stability, falling out of sync in the process.
Betts in his last two games got back on line.
“With him, it’s always been, when it clicks, we know right away,” Van Scoyoc said.
It’s clicking. No more theories. Just play.
(Top photo of Mookie Betts: Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)
