LOS ANGELES — Mookie Betts did not have time to think. It wouldn’t matter. That was the point of all the work he’d done to remake himself into a major-league shortstop.
It was the sixth inning of a one-run game, with the bases loaded and just one out, and the Los Angeles Dodgers were still working to close out the Cincinnati Reds. That’s when Austin Hays sent trouble toward short, a soft liner off the end of his bat, the kind of play that any hesitation could turn into a nightmare. Betts did not hesitate.
This was Mookie, the new version — the version the Dodgers will need to repeat as World Series champions.
“I just kind of reacted,” Betts said Wednesday night, recounting how he fired a sure throw home to record the first out of an inning. “I think that’s why I’ve been able to play short, be comfortable out there, because I’m just kind of playing.”
Betts could have broken to attempt a spectacular catch, or he could have backed up and risked taking too much time. Instead, he anticipated the short hop and attacked it like a seasoned big-league shortstop. Then he looked up at the runners before firing a strike to the plate.
“I’m just proud of myself for making it all the way through the year and actually achieving a goal that I kind of set out to do — and that’s being a major-league shortstop — and say I did it and I’m good at it,” Betts said, ahead of the Dodgers’ National League Division Series matchup with the Philadelphia Phillies. “Now it’s just a matter of going out and doing it on the big stage.”
Gone is the offensive slump that dragged on and on. Gone are the days when the outfielder-turned-infielder had to think through situations and hops he’d never seen before.
Mookie Betts started hitting again once he was able to stop pressing so hard on defense. (Cincinnati Enquirer via Imagn Images)
Betts’ dazzling as a shortstop in October is a concept that seemed unfathomable even to him just a few years ago. But this stage was set by the winter that preceded it, when Betts worked fastidiously with infield coach Chris Woodward, video coordinator Pedro Montero and former big-league infielder Ryan Goins to learn how to be a shortstop in the majors.
An offseason trip to Austin, Texas, to visit former All-Star shortstop Troy Tulowitzki served as a finishing school for a transition without precedent.
The result this season was a glove regarded as one of the best in the sport at one of the game’s hardest positions. Betts went from the 101-level to graduate school in record time. His 17 Defensive Runs Saved this season led all major-league shortstops.
When prospect Alex Freeland came up to the big leagues for the first time this July, he affixed himself to Betts’ hip. Freeland, a well-regarded defensive infielder, was learning from a six-time Gold Glove right fielder how to play shortstop. Betts doesn’t take hours’ worth of groundballs anymore. Instead, his daily routine is refined: It’s “sharpening your knife,” Betts calls it.
The position consumed him and his mental bandwidth until it didn’t.
“I could just go out there and play,” Betts said. “And now when I go out and play shortstop, it’s like I’m going out to right field. I don’t even think about it.
“My training is good. I believe in myself. I believe in what I can do. And now it’s just like, go have fun. When the ball comes, have fun. So that’s when I knew I could finish the season (at shortstop).”
He doesn’t remember when it happened. But one inning in August against their eventual Wild Card Series foe showed the breakthrough in full effect. The Reds’ Ke’Bryan Hayes stung a ball toward Betts’ right, the kind of ball that had always given Betts trouble in his brief forays at shortstop before this season. Betts took an anticipatory step and didn’t hesitate, breaking toward the ball and sliding to grab it. In one motion, he popped back to his feet and fired. The throw to Freddie Freeman at first base was perfect.
Betts looked euphoric.
“He just looked like a natural shortstop right there,” Roberts said, recalling the moment. “He’s been as good as I could have ever expected playing that position.”
His defensive strides have opened up the rest of his game. Just like when he starred in right field, Betts doesn’t have to think about his glove. That has freed up his bat, which looked doomed from the start this season. Betts lost close to 20 pounds on the eve of Opening Day due to a stomach virus.
Now, he can acknowledge that the illness sapped his strength. He let bad habits creep in as he tried to compensate for his weight loss. Each thing he tried to fix his swing just made things worse.
Then he let go. Credit what you want for Betts’ revival. It could be the visit he had with longtime friend and teammate J.D. Martinez in Tampa, Fla., who has always been a sage for Betts’ swing. It could be that his newfound comfort at shortstop allows him more time and bandwidth to try to get things right. Maybe it was shedding expectations. He said in August his season was over, to “chalk it up” as a bad season that sticks out like a sore thumb when lined up next to the others in his career.
Betts had the longest hitless stretch of his career, 22 miserable at-bats, that bled into August. When he broke out of it, the hits kept coming. Betts hit .317 the rest of the way, with an .892 OPS in his final 210 plate appearances.
“It’s just hard to gain your weight and sustain strength in the middle of a season, when you’ve been traveling and doing all these things,” Betts said. “I think I finally got all that back and was able to fix a couple of mechanics and didn’t really have to try and add on power anymore. I could just swing and let it do its thing.”
Betts flashed his brilliance on both sides of the diamond as the Dodgers closed out the Reds in the Wild Card Series. After that nifty play on the ball off Hays’ bat, the Dodgers preserved their lead, as Yoshinobu Yamamoto struck out the next two batters to end the inning. Betts added to the Dodgers’ lead a half-inning later, scorching a double down the third-base line as one of four hits on the night.
A season that tested Betts like no other now has him playing freer than ever before.
“I think I just accepted failing, and so my thought process on failing changed,” Betts said. “And it was instead of looking at the things as failures, I looked at it as: ‘OK, well, I know that’s not it. Now I can move to the next thing … instead of sulking in — well, I tried this and it failed, now I don’t know where to go.’ I just used (failures) as positive things, and it eventually turned.”
(Top photo: Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)