There is only one Shohei Ohtani when it comes to multiplicity of greatness, but what Betts is doing deserves its own measure of wonder.
The Dodgers’ morning workout and B-squad game ended, leaving players to down time in the clubhouse to attend to lunch, treatment, their phone, Ping-Pong games or other diversions. One player remained on a back field, working up a sweat on double play pivots with infield coaches Chris Gutierrez, Dino Ebel and Chris Woodward.
This was no kid trying to make the team. This was one of the five most valuable players in baseball putting in the extra work at a position—second base—he has played only 30 times in his nine-year major league career. And that midday tableau Sunday is why Mookie Betts is so valuable.
Betts is a six-time All-Star, six-time Gold Glove winner in the outfield, a former MVP, a player signed through age 39 under a $365 million contract and who is the best pound-for-pound slugger in 75 years. And yet here he is at age 30 putting in the sweat equity to be a legit infielder and outfielder for Los Angeles.
It’s a labor of love. An infielder most of his life and still in his heart, Betts told the Dodgers after last season he would move to second base to accommodate the potential signing of Aaron Judge as a free agent to play right field. (Judge would later decide to stay with the Yankees.)
“Yes, that sounds probably like something I said,” Betts says. “But hey, that was going to be a tough get.” Asked whether he made a recruiting pitch to Judge, Betts says, “No, I don’t do that. I want guys to do whatever’s best for them and their families.”
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When Dodgers shortstop Gavin Lux blew out his knee last week, sidelining him for the season, Betts’s versatility suddenly went from luxury to necessity. Manager Dave Roberts planned to use Miguel Rojas to spell Lux at short and rookie Miguel Vargas at second. With Rojas thrust into regular work at shortstop, Betts has become the No. 1 option to give Vargas days off against tough right-handers and to get another outfield bat into the lineup.
“It’s real,” Roberts says about Betts’s likelihood of playing second base. “The way I envision it, Mookie starts about 40 games at second base and 110 in the outfield.”
And 10 days as a DH?
“Nah. He doesn’t like DH,” Roberts says. “Ten days off.”
Before the workout, Betts told me only half-kiddingly that he might abandon any ideas of playing second base because of criticism he received about trying to play two positions.
“We’ll see. I mean, I may retire [from playing second], because people don’t like it,” he says. “They said I’m too good in right. So, I should just do that full time, to just stay out in right. So, I’m just, ‘Well, all right. … I’ll go back out there.’ Whatever it is, that’s what it is.”
When Betts is done with his daily infield drills, I tell him about Roberts’s plan: 40 games at second base and 110 in the outfield.
“That sounds perfect,” he says. “Great.”
There is only one Shohei Ohtani when it comes to multiplicity of greatness, but what Betts is doing deserves its own measure of wonder. Plenty of players have split time between second base and the outfield, including Whit Merrifield, Kiké Hernández, Jeff McNeil, Tony Phillips, Ben Zobrist, César Tovar and the rest of a baseball subset generally regarded as “super-utility” players. But here we are talking about one of the greatest stars of the game and the linchpin on a Dodgers’ team with more questions than usual about how they will score runs. No one has played 40 games at second and 100 in the outfield and hit 20 home runs, never mind the career-high 35 Betts hit last season.
Asked whether he was on board with playing second base, including for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic, Betts says, “Yeah. Absolutely. I love it. I didn’t ask to go to right field. I was forced out there.
“People really miss the point, which is like, that’s my whole life. I did not play the outfield. I played two weeks before I did in my [MLB] debut. That’s the only time I played there. So, I think it just kind of gets missed. I still don’t see myself as an outfielder. I see myself as an individual still. I mean, I’m just good. Obviously I work hard. If I’m going to play outfield, I’m going to do it to the best of my ability.
“I’ve been out there for nine years now, so it’s kind of easy to miss. But yeah, all through my life, that’s where I played—infield. The only time I’m going to go to the outfield is when the game starts. But I take ground balls at short every day.”
Battling inconsistency last season, Betts still pounded 35 homers and led the league with 117 runs but saw his on-base percentage dip to a career low, .340. After the season, Betts and several Dodgers visited the hitting experts at Driveline.
“The only thing they really told me is I needed to get stronger,” Betts says.
About four years ago Betts turned to a vegan diet to “clean up some health things, some health problems.” Then in 2021 he sustained a bone spur in his hip, which prevented him that offseason from adhering to his usual strength training.
“So, I just kind of lost strength,” he says. “When you lose strength, you lose bat speed. So, they pretty much told me to get stronger.”
Betts, who played last season at 170 pounds, added eight pounds over the winter.
“In Boston, I was playing at about 174, 175,” he says. “So, I’m stronger now than I was then.”
Also on Driveline’s advice, Betts added a weighted bat hitting routine. He hits with three metal bats: one with extra weight toward the barrel, one with extra weight toward the handle and one that is much lighter than his usual bat. The overload/underload work with bats is like how pitchers train with balls of various weights.
“Those guys are training to throw a hundred,” Betts says. “We’re training to hit a hundred. That’s all it is.”
After adding eight pounds and the overload/underload routine, is Betts noticing a difference?
“I don’t,” he says. “I am swinging faster because the little monitor lets us know. But I don’t notice as much as other people do. So long as somebody notices.”
Betts is a career .520 slugger, including .521 with the Dodgers after a .519 mark with the Red Sox with a more hitter-friendly Fenway as his home park. Only three players no taller than 5’9″ were better sluggers, and none played after 1947 (Hack Wilson, Earl Averill and Mel Ott). Betts has learned how to hit the ball in the air more and with backspin. Combine such power with his defense and speed, and Betts is the MLB leader in WAR over the last five, six and seven years.
He is one of 23 players in baseball history to sign a contract of 10 years or more. None of those stars went back and forth between the infield and the outfield. It’s a sign of how rare a talent Betts is. And it is a sign of how much the Dodgers need him.
