Steve Webb
KANSAS CITY, MO — One of the things that Dodger fans have had to learn to live with when it comes to their superstar Mookie Betts is his notoriously streaky hitting. When he’s cold, he just looks lost at the plate (see the 2022 series with San Diego). But when he’s hot, man is it glorious to watch. Friday night in Kansas City was an example of the latter. Betts went 4-for-4 with two home runs and 4 RBI and led the way to a 9-3 win over the Kansas City Royals. It was as good as he’d looked at the dish all year.
Betts didn’t waste any time in this one. In the top of the first against rookie Alec Marsh, who was making his big league debut, Betts went yard on the fifth pitch of the ballgame. He took a 3-1 four-seamer and drilled it to left, depositing it among the paying customers for a quick 1-0 Dodger lead. Then in the third, he he hit another solo shot, this one off the left field foul pole, to put the visitors up 2-0. Well, at least young Marsh will have a good story to tell…
But Mookie wasn’t done. An RBI single in the fourth and a double in the eighth drove in one final run to put the Dodgers comfortably ahead. Throw in a couple of walks and you get a pretty solid night at the office, I’d say.
“It’s hard to say [what’s changed] because sometimes it comes and goes, but today was a good day,” Betts said of his recent success. “I think me leading off the game with a homer gave us a bolt of energy and we rode it for all nine.”
“It’s clear that we just go off his energy and performance, and he got us going again tonight and the guys fed off of that,” Manager Dave Roberts said after Mookie’s monster night.
But it wasn’t exclusively the Mookie Show on Friday. A lot of Dodgers continued where they left off in the last game at Coors. Jason Heyward continues to pay dividends, as he scorched the ball on multiple occasions on way to a three-hit night of his own. Bobby Miller had a decent bounce-back from two straight disappointing starts. And Freddie Freeman and Will Smith both got key extra base hits to fuel the nine-run output. So far on the road trip, the Dodgers are averaging nine runs a game, quite the difference from that low point at Dodger Stadium against the Giants a couple of weeks ago.
In addition, long-lost friend Daniel Hudson finally made it back to a big-league mound after sustaining a horrible injury during the series in Atlanta last spring. He looked very, very sharp. The veteran righty gave up only an infield single in one inning of work, but got two strikeouts and left the baserunner stranded at first. More of this, please.
So this ends June with a 12-12 record. It was the first month with a non-winning record for the club since the storied horrible April of 2018, when the Dodgers were just awful, falling to nine games out of first place at one point. However, the outlook this time around is much more positive. The Dodgers have won seven of the last nine games and after Kansas City, they have a pretty easy homestand to end the first half of the season with: four with the Pirates (struggling after a hot start) and two with the Angels (who the Dodgers have owned of late).
And in even better news, the Dodgers will be getting its other ace lefty back in the rotation. Julio Urias makes his long awaited return to the mound on Saturday, starting the middle game of this Royals series. And he’ll get to show his wares to the world, as it will be a national broadcast game on Fox TV (well, I’d imagine the rest of the country will be watching Rays/Mariners, which is a far more interesting match-up). Still, it will be good to see El Culichi back in action, and I’m sure he is eager to show the Dodgers (and anyone else who’s got money to spend) that he’s going to be worth a big investment during the offseason when he becomes a free agent.
Are you ready for your close-up, Julio?
