Cody Snavely
One of the biggest storylines of the 2024 Major League Baseball season was the Los Angeles Dodgers deciding to shift eight-time all-star and six-time Gold Glove Award winner Mookie Betts from right field to shortstop.
With less than a week remaining in the Cactus League, the Dodgers had said they’d seen enough from former top prospect Gavin Lux, who, despite having a good offensive showing in spring training, was less than stellar defensively.
Betts was preparing to become the team’s full-time second baseman, a plan that the Dodgers announced during last year’s winter meetings; however, shortly before the Dodgers left the States for Seoul, South Korea, the Dodgers moved Betts to a position he had not played full-time since he was a senior in high school.
Betts would remain the Dodgers’ full-time shortstop for most of the first half of the 2024 regular season, but when the then Most Valuable Player frontrunner was hit by a pitch on his non-throwing hand, fracturing his wrist, the Dodgers would switch gears upon his return.
From the moment he was activated in August until the Dodgers played their last game in the Fall Classic, Betts reverted back to right field, a position he had mastered thus far in his career.
However, after the confetti had settled and the Dodgers front office started to plan for the upcoming 2025 season, Dodgers General Manager Brandon Gomes stated during the annual General Manager meetings in November that Betts would be a full-time infielder moving forward.
Logically, most fans, like myself, assumed that Betts would return to second base, the position he had planned to start full-time during the 2024 season before being abruptly moved, but that is not the case.
During an interview with the media, Gomes reiterated that Betts would indeed be a full-time infielder but shockingly announced that Betts would be preparing to become the team’s full-time shortstop yet again, a plan they’ve known internally for a few weeks.
Offensively, Betts was arguably the best shortstop in the league in the first half of the season, with a .304/.405/.488 slash line, .892 OPS, ten home runs, and forty RBIs in seventy-two games.
By that point, Betts was in the driver’s seat for his second career Most Valuable Player Award, offensively speaking, but defensively, after months of rigorous pregame work trying to perfect his craft at shortstop, may have caught up with him.
In 531.1 innings at shortstop this past season, Betts had a -4 OAA (Outs Above Average), a career-worst nine errors, a .963 fielding percentage, and a 76% success rate in 217 attempts.
Unlike last season, Betts will now have an entire offseason to prepare and train for the grueling position of the infield as the Dodgers look to put the finishing touches on their roster over the next several weeks.
Betts’s move to shortstop has a rippling effect on the entire Dodgers roster. First, Gomes stated that with Betts getting the bulk of starts at short, recently extended infielder Tommy Edman would get the majority of his starts in center field.
As for Gavin Lux, it seems his place on the roster is safe for now as he can easily just stay at second base, barring any trade for another infielder such as Nolan Arenado.
For Max Muncy, Gomes explained that he still expects him to be the full-time third baseman for the upcoming season, but as we know, things can change in an instant.
It’ll be interesting to see what the Dodgers do moving forward, but the decision to keep Betts as the starting shortstop will most definitely be controversial.
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