The break day was unanticipated.
The change to the lineup was much more of a shock.
In what has turn into a season-long battle by Mookie Betts and Dodgers coaches to get the slumping celebrity again on monitor, this weekend introduced probably the most obvious examples of experimentation but.
First, on Saturday, supervisor Dave Roberts gave Betts an sudden off day and offering what he felt was a wanted psychological reset after sensing Betts — who missed the All-Star Sport for the primary time in a decade this 12 months — was nonetheless off regardless of his week-long break.
Then, on Sunday, Roberts gave the veteran slugger an sudden problem: Bumping him up from the two-hole to the leadoff spot within the batting order in hopes it might set off one thing amid a career-worst season on the plate.
“Looking at how things are going, where Mookie is at emotionally, mechanics-wise, all in totality,” Roberts mentioned, “I felt that giving him a different look in the lineup, hitting him at the top, something he’s obviously been accustomed to throughout his career, will put him in a mindset of just [trying] to get on base and just trying to take good at-bats.”
“There’s a lot of internal kind of searching that goes on with the mechanics and things like that,” Roberts added. “But I personally do feel that the external part of it — hitting at the top of the order, having a mindset to get on base — I think will help move this along better.”
All of it served as the newest confounding chapter in what has been a attempting season for Betts and his once-potent swing, the most recent effort by the membership to ease the frustration that has weighed on his thoughts amid a summer-long hunch — whereas ready for his mechanics to lastly get again in sync.
“This is a process I’ve never been through,” mentioned a clearly-dejected Betts, who entered Monday sporting a .240 batting common (rating one hundred and twentieth out of 158 certified MLB hitters), .684 OPS (132nd) and 11 dwelling runs (tied for 89th), to associate with well-below-league-average marks in underlying metrics like common exit velocity (twenty ninth percentile amongst MLB hitters), hard-hit fee (twentieth percentile) and bat velocity (twelfth percentile).
“I don’t have any answers,” he continued. “I don’t know how to get through this. I don’t know. I’m working every day. Hopefully it turns.”
The leadoff train began with blended outcomes Sunday. Betts singled within the third inning, one at-bat earlier than new No. 2 man Shohei Ohtani hit a house run. However, in a failed ninth-inning rally that despatched the Dodgers to a sequence sweep towards the Milwaukee Brewers, he completed a one-for-five day by lining out sharply to heart area, ending the sport with Ohtani caught within the on-deck circle.
Betts will proceed to guide off for the foreseeable future, with Roberts committing to retaining him on the prime of the order — and Ohtani, the staff’s earlier leadoff hitter, within the two spot — at the very least till Max Muncy makes his anticipated return from a knee damage someday subsequent month.
“The only way we’ll know, we’ll find out, is once we do that for an extended period of time,” Roberts mentioned. “I do think that there will be some fallout from that kind of external mindset of, ‘Hey, I’m hitting at the top of the order. My job is to get on base, set the table for Shohei and the guys behind him.’ I think that will lead to better performance.”
Till such a turnaround truly materializes, nonetheless, the seek for solutions to Betts’ struggles will go on, with the Dodgers persevering with to attempt to unravel the thriller behind a sudden, unsettling hunch nobody noticed coming.
“I just got to play better,” Betts mentioned. “I got to figure it out.”
Certainly, whereas his celebrity teammates had been at All-Star festivities in Atlanta final week, Betts spent the break again dwelling in Nashville, engaged on his swing at a non-public coaching facility.
In a single clip that emerged on social media, Betts was seen doing one of many many drills which have helped him keep offensive excellence over his 12 big-league seasons: Taking hacks with a yellow ball pressed snuggly between his elbows, attempting to advertise the fluid and related movement that has eluded him this 12 months.
“With Mookie, a lot of it has to do with how his arms and hands work, and getting his arm structure properly lined up,” hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc mentioned. “It sets up how the bat slots, and how his body sequences.”
For Betts, a 5-foot-10 expertise who has lengthy exceeded expectations as one of many sport’s most undersized sluggers, such mechanical effectivity has all the time been paramount.
As he famous early this season, when his hunch first got here into focus in early Might, he has by no means had the identical margin for error as a number of the sport’s extra bodily gifted star hitters. He can’t muscle doubles or hit dwelling runs off the top of his bat. He can’t afford to have a nasty bat path or disjointed swing sequence and be the identical hitter who, simply two years in the past, batted .307 with 39 dwelling runs.
“I can’t, unfortunately, not have my A-swing that day but still run into something and [have it] go over the fence or whatever,” Betts mentioned again then. “Even when I have my A-swing, if I don’t get it, it’s not gonna be a homer. If I don’t flush that ball in that gap, they’re gonna catch it.”
And this season, a lot to his chagrin, flushing line drives and cranking huge flies has turn into a irritating rarity.
Figuring out the rationale why has led to numerous potential theories.
At the beginning of the 12 months, Betts believed he created unhealthy swing habits whereas recovering from a March abdomen bug that noticed him lose 20 kilos and a few of his already underwhelming bat velocity.
However as he tried reverting to psychological cues and mechanical feels that had recalibrated him prior to now, nothing appeared to click on in the identical method they as soon as did.
“The cues and feels that I’ve used my whole life, in Boston and L.A., just don’t work anymore,” he mentioned this weekend. “So I’m just trying to find out who I am now, what works now.”
A few of that, in fact, might be attributed to age. Betts will probably be 33 by the top of this season. He’s developing on 1,500 profession video games. Inevitably, even gamers of his caliber finally begin to decline bodily.
Roberts, nonetheless, framed it extra by the lens of evolution. On the one hand, he mentioned of Betts, “I know he’s still in his prime. I know he’s as strong as he’s been in quite some time.” Nevertheless, the supervisor added, “his body has changed and will continue to change,” requiring Betts to seek out new methods to maximise the facility the staff nonetheless believes he possesses.
“That’s the nature of hitting,” Van Scoyoc mentioned. “He has to find something for him that works organically, that gets him lined up again.”
This dynamic is why, to each Betts and the Dodgers, his full-time transfer to shortstop this season hasn’t been in charge.
Betts has repeatedly pushed again towards that narrative, pointing to the MVP-caliber numbers he posted whereas enjoying the place in the course of the first half of final 12 months (earlier than a damaged hand price him two months and compelled him to return to proper area for the Dodgers’ World Collection run) and the two-week tear with which he began this season (when he batted .304 with 4 dwelling runs over his first 15 video games).
Mookie Betts and the Dodgers proceed to insist his season-long hunch on the plate has little to do together with his full-time transfer to shortstop.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Occasions)
And although his new defensive function has include some added challenges — Betts mentioned on his Bleacher Report podcast final month that his each day pregame workload has elevated whereas enjoying shortstop, to the purpose “it probably does weigh on you a little bit hitting” — he has additionally emphasised the boldness he has gained from his defensive enhancements; his shortstop play serving because the one factor that has gone proper in a season of offensive distress.
“I just can’t see that you go out there and stick him in right field tonight and he’s going to throw out two hits or three hits, or he goes to second base and he’s going to go on a heater,” Roberts echoed earlier this month, earlier than reiterating Sunday that the staff has not thought-about altering Betts’ place. “That’s hard for me to kind of imagine. It’s a fair ask. But I just don’t see that as the case.”
As an alternative, the main focus has remained not solely on Betts’ flawed swing mechanics, however the ensuing negative effects it has had on his method on the plate.
One stat that jumped out to Roberts just lately: In Betts’ final 99 plate appearances, he has walked just one time — an incredibly low quantity for a hitter with a stroll fee of practically 11% over his profession.
To Roberts, it’s an indication that Betts, in his ongoing search to get his swing synced up, is failing to perform the much more elementary activity of working good counts and ready out errors.
“If you’re ‘in-between’ on spin versus velocity, and [getting in bad] counts, you’re not as convicted [with your swing],” Roberts mentioned, tying all of Betts’ issues into one self-fulfilling cycle that has solely additional perpetuated his lack of outcomes. “So my eyes tell me he’s been ‘in-between’ a lot.”
Which is why, in latest weeks, Roberts had began to mull the thought of transferring Betts into the leadoff spot.
In spite of everything, the supervisor hypothesized, if Betts can’t discover his swing by grinding within the batting cage and analyzing his mechanics — as he did throughout his off day on Saturday — then perhaps reframing his mindset in video games can higher assist him get there.
“It speaks to how much faith I have in him as a ballplayer,” Roberts mentioned. “To, where he’s scuffling, not move him down but ironically move him higher in the order. “I think that kind of support, and the different way that he’ll see the lineup as it’s presented each day, will kind of lead into a different mindset and I think that’ll be a good thing for all of us.”
For now, the Dodgers can solely hope.
With Muncy nonetheless out, Freddie Freeman having his personal latest hunch compounded by a ball that hit him within the left wrist on Sunday, and the Dodgers caught in a present 2-10 spiral that has seen their once-comfortable division lead dwindle main as much as the commerce deadline, they want the previous Betts greater than ever proper now.
To this point, the seek for solutions has met no finish.
“It’s hard,” Betts mentioned, “but I got to figure it out at some point.”
