How Mookie Betts “got out of his head” and went back to hitting. Can it save the Dodgers in 2024?

SAN DIEGO – One of Major League Baseball's best home-court advantages lived up to its reputation on Tuesday night. Every mistake the Dodgers made in Game 3 seemed to invite another one. It felt like Petco Park was suffocating the opponent. Twenty-four hours later, another record crowd filled the squares, expecting the celebrations to continue. Just one win away from defeating the Dragon in the North again in the National League Division Series, Padres fans were ready to party like it was 2022.

Instead, they were never given a reason.

Mookie Betts helped pull him out of his postseason slump and regain his confidence with an 8-0 win that saved the Dodgers' season.

“My teammates did a great job trying to instill confidence in me,” Betts said. “I had to turn off all social media because it was all negative and I needed to build some positive vibes within myself.”

They've been hard to come by lately.

Betts entered this week hitless in his last 22 postseason at-bats and 2-for-31 dating back to the start of the 2022 NLDS. During that time, the Dodgers were 2-7 in playoff games.

Amid the drought, Betts' teammates tried to keep his spirits up. To remind the eight-time All-Star who he is.

“Mook is our guy,” Max Muncy said. “He is one of our leaders. He is still one of the best baseball players. I know he's overshadowed a little bit because we have Shohei Ohtani, but (Betts) still gets $400 million, too. He's one of the best players in baseball, and he was one of the best players in the postseason. I know he hasn't shown that in the last two years, but I mean, look at what he's done in the past.”

In 2018, Betts helped lead the Red Sox to the World Series championship in an MVP season. Two years later, in his first week with the Dodgers, on the first day of spring training with the entire team, Betts urged his new teammates to take more responsibility for their efforts and to treat each training representative as if it were the World Series . The speech set the tone for another championship season.

During the Dodgers' 2020 short-season title run, Betts had an .871 playoff OPS in the playoffs and had four extra-base hits in the World Series, including a home run in the deciding Game 6. The following year, he hit . 458 in the NLDS against the Giants and finished the series with a four-hit performance in a crucial Game 5 that helped put the Dodgers ahead. Their journey ended against the Braves in the National League Championship Series, where Betts' struggles began.

When he appeared in San Diego this week, Betts was in the midst of a 3-for-44 playoff loss. No one had to remind him.

“I know it’s there,” Betts said.

Manager Dave Roberts could tell it was starting to seep into Betts' psyche.

“It's up to all of us to make sure he's in good shape to go out there and compete and not worry too much about every single shot,” Roberts said.

Muncy and others have tried to do their part.

“When they accompany Sho to the pitch when he gets a big hit, I tell him, 'Hey, you get $400 (million) too, bro,'” Muncy said. “‘You also get $400 (million). You're still one of the best players.' Sometimes you just need to be reminded.

For a few seconds on Sunday at Dodger Stadium, Betts seemed to be turning a corner.

In the first inning of Game 2, he hit a deep drive that traveled 354 feet to left field. It would have been a home run in 19 furlongs. Fooled by Jurickson Profar's histrionics, it wasn't until he was halfway between second and third base that Betts realized Profar had secured the catch. Betts would go hitless the rest of the night and take his skid with him to San Diego.

Determined to dig himself out of trouble, Betts celebrated his 32nd birthday in a batting cage on Monday by swinging hundreds and hundreds of times on the Dodgers' practice day before Game 3 in San Diego.

“You just see it,” Muncy said. “We have seen the last month. That was the work and preparation he had every day.”

He hit it. He hit outside. Instead of taking the time to clear his head, Betts believed the only way out was through. If he turned off his brain, his problems would only get worse, Betts suspected.

“I've seen him make swings that look great to me, and for some reason he just says it doesn't feel like it should,” Tommy Edman said. “But he just has a high standard for what his swing should feel like. He’s one of the hardest workers I’ve ever played with.”

So Betts kept tinkering, trying to find the right feel.

Swing after swing after swing.

“I don’t care if I overdo it,” Betts said. “I'd rather overdo it than not try hard. As soon as I get to the park, I'm in the cage and don't leave until I'm back in the field. And I come back in and I scored some more.

On Tuesday the work finally resulted in production.

Considering what happened before Game 3, you couldn't blame him for being in disbelief when he finally erupted.

In the first inning of the first game after the best catch of Profar's life, Betts presented another robbery opportunity. It looked like a replica of his swing at Dodger Stadium. Again, Profar reached into the stands and stretched his arm over the short wall at Petco Park. Betts was so confident that the Padres left fielder had the ball and was trolling again that he began jogging back to his dugout after making the rounds to first. He was near the pitcher's mound when he realized Profar hadn't made the play. Betts stormed back to the baseline and continued his home run streak.

The game would soon get out of hand for the Dodgers. A grand slam from Teoscar Hernández couldn't stop them being pushed to the brink.

But there was an important silver lining.

“I think I just needed to see a fall, man,” Betts said.

He finished the night with two goals and another on Wednesday.

“It's like a hit here, a hit there, they build that momentum and continue to build that momentum over time,” Dodgers hitting coach Aaron Bates said. “He builds it up slowly and it stays for a while.”

In Game 4, Betts went deep for his first shot of the game for the second straight game. This time there was no hesitation in his trot around the bases. Betts made a 403-foot shot to left-center.

“If he leaves,” Hernández said, “everyone will follow him.”

That's what happened in Wednesday's eight-run turnover. In the next inning, Ohtani scored a run with an RBI single. Betts followed with another RBI hit. The stars at the top of the lineup started the day a combined 3-for-4 with three RBI, and Betts had finally found something of a groove.

“He knows who he is,” said reliever Daniel Hudson, who pitched a scoreless inning in the Dodgers’ Game 4 shutout. “But this is a really, really tough game and the hitting is even tougher than it is for me. I think sometimes he can be a bit hard on himself. So to see him come out in the last two games and score some big hits. “For us, hopefully it's a little bit of a weight lifted off his shoulders and he can go out there and just be Mookie.”

Suddenly the hits came in droves: a double by Muncy, a two-run home run by Will Smith. In the bottom of the third inning, the Dodgers led 5-0 and had already had more hits than in the previous two games.

In the process, they removed one of San Diego's greatest assets.

The “Beat LA” chants that had just burst with energy and helped the Padres to a thrilling Game 3 victory suddenly sounded more like a plea. The 2024 Dodgers, with their season on the line, wouldn't fail as lifelessly as they did with their first-round exits the last two years.

Miguel Rojas was missing on Wednesday, having to leave Game 3 early due to a torn adductor muscle. They didn't have Freddie Freeman, who got a day off because of his sprained ankle. (The Dodgers made this decision during a team breakfast on the morning of Game 4.) They also had no starter and went to a bullpen game while facing elimination.

But they had Betts, the six-time Silver Slugger, who was starting to resemble the player who was on the MVP track this season before a broken hand sidelined him for two months.

“I think we all knew Mookie was going to be Mookie,” Freeman said.

Just as important, Betts may also have remembered that the series moves to a winner-take-all matchup in Los Angeles on Friday.

“I think he just needed a few hits to get it out of his head,” Muncy said. “You saw it the last two nights, he was Mookie Betts.”

Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the LA Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. Rowan, an LSU graduate, was born in California, grew up in Texas and then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on Twitter at @RowanKavner.

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