How Dodgers' Mookie Betts got his postseason groove back

LOS ANGELES -- Mookie Betts spent part of his 32nd birthday practically locked inside Petco Park's batting cage. It was Monday afternoon in San Diego, an off day from an impassioned National League Division Series and an opportunity for its participants to separate from it. Betts took the opposite approach. He swung and swung and swung, outside and indoors, against soft tosses and high velocity.

Two nights later, after a series-tying Game 4 victory, relief filled the Los Angeles Dodgers' clubhouse. Their season, volatile as it might be, had been saved. And Betts had been a catalyst, homering in a second consecutive game and following with a run-scoring single. Perhaps, his teammates and coaches hoped, Betts had put his confounding 0-for-22 postseason slump behind him. Perhaps, as the Dodgers prepare to confront the rival San Diego Padres in a winner-take-all Game 5 on Friday night, he can once again drive their offense.

"Mook's our guy," Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy said. "He's one of our leaders. He's still one of the best players in baseball. I know he gets a little bit overshadowed because we have Shohei Ohtani, but that guy's still getting paid $400 million too. He is one of the best players in baseball, and he's been one of the best players in the postseason. I know these last two years haven't shown that, but, I mean, come on. Look at what he's done in the past. He can still do it in the postseason. I think he just needed to get a couple hits to get it out of his head."

IF THERE WAS a moment that seemed to epitomize Betts' struggles in recent playoffs, it came early in Sunday's Game 2. The first pitch Yu Darvish threw to Betts was a sweeper that did not tail far enough outside. Betts followed its path, lofting it deep into the left-field corner for what seemed destined for a home run. It wasn't until Betts got midway to third base that he realized Padres outfielder Jurickson Profar had reached over the wall and traversed an eager group of Dodgers fans to secure the baseball. It was an out, the first of four for Betts on this night. By the end of it, his postseason hitless drought -- spanning NLDS exits in 2022 and 2023 -- had stretched to 22 at-bats, tied for the fourth-longest ever by a former MVP.

After the game, Betts took no solace in the near-homer.

"They're all outs," he said of his at-bats. "So, all terrible."

Hitters typically embrace a process-oriented mindset. If a batter saw a pitch well, if his mechanics were sound, if he met his bat's barrel with the baseball, he's often satisfied, regardless of the outcome. So much of a hitter's results are out of his control -- after all, pitchers dictate the action -- that focusing solely on the decisions that lead up to them can serve as a useful defense mechanism.

Betts is different. He cares about his process, but it's the results that matter most. A batted ball that should have sailed over the fence but resulted in an out might bring him down; a broken-bat single that found space in the outfield might get him going. Early in the series, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts could see the pressure of snapping his hitless drought bleed into Betts' at-bats.

"It's up to all of us," Roberts said the day after Game 2, "to make sure he's in a good head space."

Roberts planned to chat with Betts after the team made its 120-mile drive south to San Diego. He wanted to remind him that he can't change the past, especially not prior Octobers. That he needed to keep his focus on the present. And that the Dodgers don't need him to be anything more than what he was during the regular season. But Roberts never had that conversation. Too many of Betts' teammates were already in his ear.

Their message boiled down to one central point: You're still Mookie Betts.

"He's one of the best at it," Muncy said. "Sometimes you just got to remind him that."

BETTS TOOK A couple-hundred swings in the batting cage Monday, give or take a few dozen, leaving some of his teammates to sit around the clubhouse and wonder when he might be finished. As the sun was setting, he ventured outside to hit off a high-velocity pitching machine stationed atop Petco Park's pitching mound.

Betts was joined by Chris Taylor and Andy Pages, two Dodgers position players who have been used sparingly in October and needed to get reacclimated to velocity. Betts kept his focus to the opposite field, repeatedly lifting pitches toward the right-center-field gap, and spoke in detail with Dodgers hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc after each session.

The 2024 regular season was a turbulent one for Betts. He began by transitioning to second base, shifted to shortstop near the end of spring training, got off to an MVP start offensively, missed nearly two months with a fractured left hand, then returned to right field and moved into the No. 2 spot in the Dodgers' lineup. Betts still finished with a .289/.372/.491 slash line, performing 45% above league average based on OPS+. But he developed bad habits near the end of September and watched them spill into October.

Most of the off day was spent tweaking Betts' prepitch load so that his hands got back into an ideal "launch position" before beginning his swing, Van Scoyoc said. Betts swung until he found it.

"That's what I know," he said. "I work."

WHEN BETTS FEELS right inside a batter's box -- when he feels like Mookie Betts -- he tends to lift the right side of his upper lip, a half-snarl, like a dog growling at an intruder.

Roberts saw that look emerge in Game 3 on Tuesday and took solace.

The Dodgers lost 6-5 but Betts performed. He snapped his hitless streak with a first-inning home run off Profar's glove -- Betts was so convinced it had been caught that he turned toward his dugout before reaching second base -- and lined a single to right-center field in his second at-bat. He followed with a 97 mph one-hopper that was cleanly fielded by Padres shortstop Xander Bogaerts and a 368-foot fly ball caught by center fielder Jackson Merrill.

The following morning, the Dodgers learned Freddie Freeman, nursing a sprained right ankle, would be unavailable. With their season on the line in Game 4, they'd stage a bullpen game without one of their three best hitters in front of a raucous opposing crowd. Betts cut through all of it in his first at-bat, working the count full against Dylan Cease before sending a 99 mph fastball 403 feet for another first-inning homer. He followed it with a two-out, opposite-field RBI single in the second inning, setting the tone in what became an 8-0 rout.

"I worked hard and finally saw one fall," he said. "I think we're all right now."

THE DODGERS ARE the only franchise in the past four decades to play a postseason game with three MVPs in the same lineup, having done so in three of the past four years. Betts was joined by Albert Pujols and Cody Bellinger in 2021 and by Bellinger and Freeman in 2022. Now he hits in front of Freeman and behind Ohtani, coming off an unprecedented 50/50 season. But there has always been a sense that Betts, more so than anybody else, sets the tone.

The build-up to Game 5 has only emphasized that point. Freeman came onto the field during Thursday's workout with athletic tape wrapped around his right shoe and took part in light running exercises. Roberts expects him to be in the lineup for Game 5 but has repeatedly acknowledged that his status can change at any moment

Ohtani homered in the second at-bat of his postseason debut and singled in his third, then went on a 1-for-10 stretch before a productive Game 4. He is 1-for-8 with three strikeouts this season against Darvish, the Game 5 starter Ohtani identified as his "childhood hero." When Darvish exits, the Padres will confront Ohtani with one of their many lefty relievers.

If the Dodgers are to advance, Betts might have to lift them.

"We need him, and he knows that," Dodgers left fielder Teoscar Hernandez said in Spanish. "He's worked really hard to find that rhythm he needs, that rhythm he hadn't found. We're all seeing it now. We're seeing a different Mookie now. We're seeing the MVP."