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Alden Gonzalez
TORONTO — The Los Angeles Dodgers’ players flew here late Wednesday night, hours earlier than their coaches, and arrived at Rogers Centre for Thursday’s late-afternoon workout on their own. But Mookie Betts wasted no time. Before most of his teammates could change out of their street clothes, he had summoned Alex Call to feed baseballs onto a tee so he could repeatedly hit them into the netting of a batting cage.
For Betts, when slumps emerge, his only solution is to attempt to swing his way out of them. The work gives him comfort, but only success can provide peace. And when it arrives — like it did in the early part of Game 6, when Betts hit the two-run single that made the difference in a season-saving 3-1 victory against the Toronto Blue Jays — it tends to mean more.
“He’s really hard on himself, and he shouldn’t be because he’s still a superstar and he’s still a guy who’s going to end up in the Hall of Fame,” Dodgers infielder Miguel Rojas said. “But I think living in the moment for him is really big. I’m just happy for him that he got the big hit, got a big night. I know for sure that’s going to help him going forward.”
Another hitless performance in Wednesday’s Game 5 loss made Betts 3-for-23 in this World Series, after which he addressed a gaggle of media members in front of his locker and provided the pithy quote that later made the rounds on social media. “I’ve just been terrible,” he said.
Then he went to work.
Betts spent most of Thursday’s workout striving to find more stability and a more comfortable hitting position that would “let his natural talent take over,” Dodgers hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc said. Betts said he wanted to “get back to being athletic again in the batter’s box.”
Before they left Rogers Centre that night, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts informed Betts, his No. 2 hitter all year, that he would bat cleanup in Game 6, a spot he had not occupied since 2017.
“I told him he can hit me seventh,” Betts said. “I just want to win.”
Roberts wanted Shohei Ohtani, Will Smith and Freddie Freeman to receive the most plate appearances with the Dodgers’ season on the line, while still keeping Betts high enough to receive opportunities to drive in runs. Batting him lower was never an option.
“I’m going to, as they say, ride or die with him,” Roberts said. “I’m not going to run from Mookie Betts. He’s just too good of a player.”
He proved it Friday, in the top of the third against Kevin Gausman, who spent most of the first two innings stifling the Dodgers’ hitters with his splitter. Tommy Edman lined a double in between Gausman’s sixth and seventh strikeouts, after which the Blue Jays intentionally walked Ohtani. Smith followed with a double to score the Dodgers’ first run and Freeman drew a walk, putting two on with two out for Betts, who approached the at-bat seeking fastballs. Betts took a 1-0 splitter for a strike, then swung through a fastball and fouled off another. Gausman threw a third consecutive fastball, this one slightly up and slightly in, and Betts lined it to left field, giving the Dodgers a lead that held up after a miraculous, game-ending double play.
“It felt great to come through for the boys,” Betts said. “Obviously I would love to play well for myself, but that’s kind of irrelevant. I want to play well for the boys. I love everybody in there. I know how much we lean on each other. And when they lean on me, I want to come through for them.”
Early this season, while transitioning into an everyday shortstop and attempting to recover from the debilitating virus that prompted him to shed close to 20 pounds, Betts went through the worst offensive struggles of his career. By the end of July, he was slashing just .240/.313/.369. When he turned it around shortly thereafter — slashing .294/.351/.478 over the final two months of the regular season — it seemed as if Betts would stay locked in throughout October.
But Betts’ bat slowed again. And though struggles were plaguing the entirety of the Dodgers’ offense, Betts took it harder than most.
“He takes it really hard when he’s not performing as well as he can,” Edman said, “and he just does everything he can to get out of it.”
Edman has seen it before. A little more than 12 months ago, Betts was struggling so badly that he locked himself inside the Petco Park batting cage on an off day during the National League Division Series, attempting to will an 0-for-22 postseason slump out of him. Before breaking out of it — and riding that wave to a 1.019 OPS over his last 14 playoff games that year, pushing the Dodgers to a championship — one staffer joked that Betts took a million swings on that fateful off day in San Diego.
This time in Toronto, Betts joked, “it was more like 500,000.”
Now, perhaps, he can back off. With everything on the line in Game 7, the Dodgers will have Ohtani on short rest, Tyler Glasnow available and perhaps Blake Snell and Roki Sasaki coming in after them. They’ll have the comfort of knowing they’ve overcome challenges like these before, most notably riding a bullpen game to save their season in that same series against San Diego last year. And, if recent history is any indication, they believe they’ll have the best version of Betts at their disposal.
“I’m just happy for him,” Van Scoyoc said, “that he can have a little peace and sleep a little bit better and come in fresh and help us win another game.”