Free of a Postseason Slump, the Real Mookie Betts Is Back

NEW YORK — Remember Mookie Betts? While much of the focus during the Dodgers’ postseason run has been on the inspiring determination — and sudden World Series heroics — of Freddie Freeman in the wake of his ankle injury, and now Shohei Ohtani’s status given his shoulder scare, the Los Angeles lineup’s other former MVP has put together an impressive October. Shaking free of a multiyear postseason slump, the 32-year-old right fielder has been the Dodgers’ top offensive performer thus far. In Game 3 of the World Series on Monday night, he made significant contributions both at the plate and in the field, helping the Dodgers to a 4-2 victory and a three-games-to-none series lead, and putting them within one win of their second championship since the team traded for him in February 2020.

Dave Roberts hasn’t forgotten Betts. “He’s one of the best players on the planet,” said the Dodgers’ manager after the win. “I’m really excited for the postseason that he’s had on both sides of the baseball.”

Through 14 games and 66 plate appearances, Betts is batting .291/.394/.582. His slugging percentage, four homers, and 159 wRC+ all lead the Dodgers, and his 14 RBI is tied with the Yankees’ Giancarlo Stanton and the Mets’ Mark Vientos for the lead among all hitters. On Monday, he went 1-for-4 with a walk and an RBI single while making four putouts in right field. In the box score, that line may look mundane, but if you saw the game unfold, his contributions couldn’t escape notice.

“I know it just looks like a regular baseball game, but it’s a lot of emotions, a lot of preparation,” said a drained Betts after the win. “It takes it out of you, so we’ve got to rest up and be ready to do it again.”

Betts didn’t get a hit in his first plate appearance against Clarke Schmidt, which followed a walk of Ohtani, but he didn’t make the Yankees starter’s night any easier. In Ohtani’s first test at the plate since suffering a left shoulder subluxation while sliding in the seventh inning of Game 2, he didn’t even take the bat off his shoulder to offer at four pitches well outside the zone. Betts quickly fell behind 0-2 on a pair of called strikes but battled back to 2-2, fouling off a couple of pitches before lofting Schmidt’s seventh of the encounter for a fly ball to left field. Four pitches later, Freeman deposited a high cutter into the short porch in right for a two-run homer — his third dinger in as many games — quickly giving the Dodgers a 2-0 lead.

The Dodgers again had something going when Betts came to bat in the third. Tommy Edman — another player stealing the spotlight from Betts — walked on four pitches, then drew two pickoff throws from Schmidt. With Ohtani at the plate, Edman lit for second base on a 2-2 sinker. Ohtani, who had swung and missed at the previous pitch, smashed a 104-mph grounder to Gleyber Torres, who had to settle for the out at first while Edman advanced into scoring position. Facing Betts again, Schmidt — who had already thrown 44 pitches — fell behind 2-0 on a high cutter and a low sinker, both inside. Betts took a up-and-away cutter for a called strike, then fouled off four of the next five pitches. On the ninth pitch of the plate appearance, he connected with an 84-mph knuckle curve on the inner third. He didn’t exactly drill it, instead producing a well-placed 71-mph bloop into right field that Juan Soto couldn’t reach, a good example of the opposite-field hitting Ben Clemens highlighted after Game 2. Edman got an excellent read on the ball and scored easily, giving the Dodgers a 3-0 lead that put the Yankees’ backs to the wall.

“That was one of the at-bats that set the tone,” Roberts said. “That at-bat, to just kind of win pitches, get down to two strikes and keep fighting, to still drive in a run — we did that all night, I thought we took those good at-bats… We did a great job of getting into their ‘pen early, seeing a lot of familiar arms, and taxing those guys too.”

Indeed, Betts’ plate appearance — the Dodgers’ longest of the night — foreshadowed the end of Schmidt’s start. He walked Freeman on five pitches, quickly retired Teoscar Hernández on a popup, then labored for eight pitches before walking Max Muncy to load the bases. Yankees manager Aaron Boone hooked Schmidt in favor of reliever Mark Leiter Jr., who retired Will Smith on a comebacker to keep the game within reach.

In the the bottom of the fourth, Betts made the first of two sparkling defensive plays. With one out and Stanton on second base after a loud double — the Yankees’ first hit of the night off starter Walker Buehler — Jazz Chisholm Jr. scorched a 101-mph liner to right. Betts initially backed up before coming in on the ball, then slid to make a diving backhanded catch, possibly saving a run. Anthony Volpe followed by roping a single to left, where Hernández made an absolutely perfect peg home in time to cut down Stanton.

“The Mookie play was interesting,” said an appreciative Buehler. “Obviously the ball is spinning a little weird, and he kind of stepped back for a second and made the play. He’s won a few Gold Gloves out there, so that’s something we kind of expect from him.”

“I thought Walker was starting to feel it a little bit, starting to get a little bit more hard contact,” Roberts said. “So to make a defensive play on a sinking liner, and then that play at home plate was just huge for all of us.”

Betts’ second big grab came with two outs and nobody on in the fifth. Buehler left a 2-1 four-seamer in the middle of the plate against Alex Verdugo, who smoked a 102-mph line drive into the right-center field gap. Running to his right and toward the warning track, Betts left his feet, twisting his body to make the catch.

That was the hardest-hit ball Buehler allowed after the first inning, and the last of his 76 pitches for the night, capping an impressive five-inning, two-hit, five-strikeout effort that kept the Yankees off the board. “Walker is always going to show up when the lights turn on,” said Betts of the 30-year-old righty, who in his comeback from his second Tommy John surgery pitched to a 5.38 ERA, battled a hip injury, and was demoted to Triple-A. Since allowing six runs in the second inning of Game 3 of the Division Series against the Padres due to a porous infield defense, he’s delivered 12 consecutive scoreless innings. “This is the real Walker Buehler,” said Betts.

And this is the real Mookie Betts. After an MVP-caliber 2023 season in which he split his time between right field and second base, with a bit of shortstop thrown in, Betts began the spring at second, then in mid-March swapped places with Gavin Lux, who was struggling defensively upon returning to shortstop following a season lost to a torn ACL. Betts was hitting .304/.405/.488 with 10 home runs, a 153 wRC+, and a league-leading 3.5 WAR when a 98-mph fastball fractured a metacarpal in his left hand on June 16. He had worked particularly hard to get up to speed at shortstop, a position he hadn’t played regularly since high school, but when he returned from the IL eight weeks later, it was in right field, the position where he’s won six Gold Gloves and built what already stands as a Hall of Fame resumé. (He’s eighth in JAWS and fourth in seven-year peak at the position, behind only Babe Ruth, Stan Musial, and Henry Aaron.)

“You want to win, that comes first,” Betts said of the return to his old position. “That’s all I care about.”

Offensively, Betts didn’t fully regain his pre-injury form, hitting .263/.314/.497 (119 wRC+) over the season’s final seven weeks. He opened the NLDS by going 0-for-6 through the first two games, which might have been of little note if that hadn’t extended his string of postseason futility to 3-for-44 dating back to Game 4 of the 2021 NLCS against the Braves; he had last hit safely in a postseason game in Game 3 of the 2022 Division Series against the Padres, taking an 0-fer in last year’s sweep by the Diamondbacks.

During the team’s bye week, reliever Brent Honeywell — who wound up off the roster for the NLDS — worked to help Betts get back on track by throwing batting practice, an example of the kind of team-first attitude that numerous Dodgers have cited as key to their impressive run. “You need someone to throw live BP in San Diego? He’s got you,” said Muncy of Honeywell as the Dodgers celebrated their NLCS clinch. “This guy might have gotten Mookie Betts right… When he threw him live BP, Mookie Betts started going off.”

“I fed him down the middle and said, ‘Crank that shit out of the ballpark,’” explained Honeywell of his session.

After coming tantalizingly, confusingly close to doing just that with a first-inning homer in NLDS Game 2 — the Jurickson Profar deke — Betts finally got on the board with a first-inning homer off Michael King in Game 3, and added a single off King as well in what was nonetheless a 6-5 loss that pushed the Dodgers to the brink of elimination. No matter. Betts homered again in the first inning of Game 4 off Dylan Cease, then added an RBI single off Bryan Hoeing in the second inning as the Dodgers cruised, 8-0.

Betts went 0-for-3 in Game 5, but rebounded to hit a sizzling .346/.452/.731 in 31 PA in the NLCS against the Mets. He collected at least one hit in every game but Game 2 (a 7-3 loss), and either scored or drove in a run (or both) in all but Game 3 (an 8-0 win in which he singled and walked). In NLCS Game 1 he had a bases-loaded double in the eighth inning off José Buttó that put a 6-0 game out of reach, but his big breakout came in Game 4, when he went 4-for-6 in a 10-2 win. Following a four-pitch Ohtani walk, he singled off Jose Quintana and scored in a two-run third inning that put the Dodgers ahead 3-1; mashed a two-run double off Buttó in the fifth; ripped a two-run homer off Phil Maton after a four-pitch walk of Ohtani in the sixth; and kicked off a three-run rally with a leadoff single off Danny Young in the eighth.

“I think that he understands that whether it’s a manager putting four fingers up or you’re throwing intentional balls two feet outside, you’re going to go after the next guy,” said Roberts of the Mets’ pitching around Ohtani to face Betts. “So I think that Mookie takes it personal like all competitors should. And I do think that stuff like that lights a little fire under him.”

In Game 5, when Roberts left Jack Flaherty and Honeywell to soak up innings to preserve the bullpen for Game 6, Betts was one of the few hitters who managed to keep the Dodgers in the game, doubling off starter David Peterson following an Ohtani single (both were stranded) and then homering off reliever Ryne Stanek in the sixth to cut the score to 10-6. In the clincher, he hit an RBI double off Kodai Senga in the eighth inning, part of a three-run rally that furthered the score to 10-4, allowing the Dodgers to breathe easier as they counted the outs down toward their first pennant since 2020.

So far in the World Series, Betts is 3-for-11 with a pair of walks. He went 0-for-3 against Gerrit Cole in Game 1 before Boone’s unorthodox decision to intentionally walk him with two outs and runners already on first and second; Freeman took it personally, hitting a walk-off grand slam. Betts then went 2-for-4 with a pair of singles off Carlos Rodón in Game 2, the second one set up Hernández’s third-inning homer, which was immediately followed by another Freeman homer.

Big or small, practically every day, Betts has done something to help the Dodgers win in October. Now they stand one victory away from their second championship of the Mookie Betts era.

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