LOS ANGELES, CA—Despite the Los Angeles Dodgers being on pace to win the National League West and have one of the best records in the sport, it has been a frustrating season for the 2018 American League MVP and three-time World Series champion, Mookie Betts.
Few players around the sport were as desperate for the All-Star break as Mookie Betts, with the eight-time All-Star posting career lows in batting average (.244), OPS (.696), and wRC+ (95).
For the first time in his Dodgers tenure, Betts was not selected to the All-Star game despite playing above-average defense at a completely new position, and the frustration was mounting.
Over the last several weeks, Betts has been bombarded with questions about his performance, a question he does not even have a complete answer to.
“I’ve never done this,” Betts said after hitting a round of batting practice on the field. More rounds awaited him in the batting cage. “It’s all new. I’ve never been this bad for this long.”
The Dodgers and their manager, Dave Roberts, had hoped a fresh start in the second half of the season would be great for Betts, but after another 0-for-4 night on Friday and the frustrating clearing leaking over from the first half struggles, the team decided to give Betts a mental day off for Saturday.
“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. The manager stressed the call was his, saying, “I wanted to take it out of his hands.”
At the time, it seemed like Betts was going to get multiple days off with Roberts not sure if he’d be in the lineup for Sunday’s series finale game versus the Milwaukee Brewers; however, not only was Betts in the lineup, he was bumped up from the two-hole to the leadoff spot.
For Betts, it was his first game in the leadoff spot since last June, after the role was taken by two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani, who went above and beyond in Betts’ absence last season due to a fractured wrist.
However, Betts’ preference in the order for most of his career has always been in the leadoff role, and the statistics reflected that. In his career, Betts maintained an elite .296/.376/.537 slash line along with a .913 OPS and 144 wRC+ in the leadoff spot compared to a 114 wRC+ in the two-hole.
Last season even saw those numbers dip from the first half, where Betts was a National League MVP favorite, to a near league-average wRC+ when shifting focus to a new role.
This season, it’s a lot more than just the mental preference for Betts, as his underlying stats are also concerning, such as his below-average bat speed, which ranks in the 12th percentile, and his Barrel% and Hard-Hit% all taking a significant decline from last season to this season.
Still, despite that, Dave Roberts has shown that he has trust in Betts, and instead of dropping him in the order, he’s hoping that a new focus and role atop the order will get Betts in a better headspace.
“It also speaks to how much faith I have in him as a ballplayer, to where he’s scuffling, to not move him down but ironically move him higher in the order,” Roberts said.
Despite how great Ohtani had been in the leadoff spot for the past full calendar year, Roberts stated that this was a move he’d have been discussing for weeks, but to do it when Betts had been as lost as he was still came as a significant surprise.
Last season, Ohtani provided the Dodgers with a true duel threat to lead off a game with his fifty-plus home run power and his fifty-plus ability to steal bases.
This season, the power has remained, but with Ohtani returning to the mound, the stolen bases and overall base running efficiency have taken a step back.
Now, Roberts hopes that Betts can focus on just the small things, such as getting on base to set up the rest of the order, and the team got a taste of that on Sunday.
Overall, Betts went 1-for-5 with a single and a run scored thanks to a two-run shot by Ohtani.
Betts is slated to maintain the leadoff spot in the order until Max Muncy returns in August or September, but will the trick work? Only time will tell.
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