There was a time when Mookie Betts’ return would have felt like an automatic cure for an out-of-sorts offense.
Today, what his renewed presence means to the Dodgers is less certain.
The player who was once capable of carrying a team is now 33 years old, and the Dodgers don’t know which version of Betts they will activate from the injured list.
The Dodgers hope Mookie Betts can help jump-start the team’s recently dormant offense. Getty Images The Betts who contended for the Most Valuable Player award annually? Or the Betts who was a virtual nonfactor on offense for the last season and a half?
After a two-game minor-league rehabilitation assignment, Betts is expected to rejoin the team Monday for the start of a four-game series against the Giants at Dodger Stadium.
Manager Dave Roberts said Betts will “probably” be in the No. 2 or 3 spot of the Dodgers’ recently impotent lineup but was otherwise careful in how he described the shortstop’s comeback.
Asked how much of his team’s recent offensive problems could be attributed to Betts’ absence, Roberts said, “It’s part of it. It’s certainly not all of it.”
With only one home run in his last 22 games, Shohei Ohtani has looked like a leadoff hitter worth about $2 million, which, in fairness to the two-way player, is the amount he will actually receive from the team this year.
Teoscar Hernandez is batting .238, Kyle Tucker .248, Will Smith .261 and Freddie Freeman .267.
Of the team’s established players, the only one who is taking decent swings is Max Muncy, and he was on the wrong side of a spectacular play in a 7-2 loss to the Braves on Sunday. With the Dodgers down by four runs in the sixth inning, Muncy was robbed of a bases-loaded extra-base hit by Eli White, who made an overhead catch on the warning track and held on to the ball after a face-first crash into the right field wall.
Betts (right) should help infuse even more energy into the Dodgers’ lineup. IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect The Dodgers dropped the last two games of the three-game series against the Braves. They scored only seven runs the entire series and managed two hits in the finale.
“There’s some empty at-bats,” Roberts said. “There’s some early outs that are just not quality outs. There’s the passing [of] the baton to the next guy — sometimes it just doesn’t happen.”
The Dodgers have been a sub-.500 team over the last three weeks, winners in only nine of their last 21 games.
Muncy said many of the team’s hitters are working to address problems with their swing mechanics.
“It’s kind of tough to compete when you’re trying to figure things out,” Muncy said. “We’ve preached that in the past sometimes, that you got to just forget about everything you’re doing off the field, and when you get in the batter’s box, you just have to compete. It’s something we’re going to harp on a little bit again right now.”
Betts could jump-start the lineup — that is if he returns as the hitter he was before breaking his left hand in the middle of the 2024 season.
Losing nearly 20 pounds early last season after contracting norovirus, Betts endured the worst offensive year of his career, batting .258. The Dodgers advised him to scale back his training regimen over the winter and he listened, resulting in him declaring in spring training that he expected to be an MVP-caliber offensive player again.
Betts was looking the part in the first week of the regular season, only to go down with a strained oblique muscle. He returned to the field over the weekend with the Dodgers’ Triple-A affiliate in Oklahoma City, collecting two hits in five at-bats.
How Betts will be affected by the time he missed is anyone’s guess, but Roberts said he at least “raises the floor” for the Dodgers’ slumping offense.
“It’s kind of a shot in the arm to have Mookie back,” Roberts said. “Just to kind of add a star player into your lineup lengthens things out. Hopefully, he can infuse some energy into this club.”
Roberts was hopeful that inserting Betts near the top of the lineup would allow him to move other players into spots of the lineup in which they would be more comfortable.
“Mookie’s DNA is to get on base, to get base hits, occasionally slug,” he said. “He’s just a threat, versus right-handers, versus left-handers. When he gets back in there, you feel good about moving guys down a little bit.”
Of course, Betts was more than a table-setter when he was at his best. And if he still has MVP-level baseball remaining in his 5-foot-9 frame, now would be a good time for him to show it. Because MVPs transform lineups, and the Dodgers’ lineup requires a transformation.
