Two days, maybe three.
When Mookie Betts first came down with a stomach bug the week the Dodgers were scheduled to leave for their season-opening trip to Japan in March, that’s how long the team’s do-everything superstar initially thought he’d feel unwell.
“I thought it was just gonna be a little two-day sickness, and that was gonna be it,” Betts said. “Go to Japan. By the time you get there, probably have a day down. Then be fine by the day before the game.”
Looking back on what instead became a two-week ordeal that derailed his opening month to the season, Betts can do nothing but shake his head.
Entering this season, the 32-year-old former MVP was filled with excitement.
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After a three-month cameo at shortstop last year, Betts was returning to the position on a full-time basis, confident that the strides he made this winter would lead to stark improvement after last season’s error-filled experiment.
Behind the scenes, Betts felt his swing was in a great place, too, setting high baseline marks in bat speed and quality of contact as he ramped up during spring camp.
“In spring training,” co-hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc said, “he was in a great spot.”
Then, however, his stomach illness changed everything. And more than a month later, the after-effects have continued to linger.
For two weeks, Betts could hardly eat solid foods, failing to keep down the little he did consume. By the time opening day arrived, he had lost nearly 20 pounds — and much of the progress he made over the winter.
“I didn’t realize how coming back so much underweight would affect me even now,” Betts said. “Trying to do that 20 pounds lighter, I just created some really, really, really bad habits, man.”
Throughout his 12-year career, the consistency of Betts’ swing has been the bedrock of his offensive success. Given his wiry 5-foot-10 frame, and naturally below-average bat speed, he’s never had much margin for error or inefficiency in his hitting mechanics. If not for the robotic-like precision he possesses in the batter’s box, he would have never been a seven-time Silver Slugger, or the majors’ most undersized power threat.
“I’m not Shohei,” Betts said. “I can’t, unfortunately, not have my A-swing that day but still run into something and [have it] go over the fence or whatever. Even when I have my A-swing, if I don’t get it, it’s not gonna be a homer. If I don’t flush that ball in that gap, they’re gonna catch it.”
“And that,” Betts added, “is when I’m fully healthy.”
For much of April, he saw what happens when he’s not.
Though Betts long ago returned to full health, as well as his typical 180-pound playing weight, he has only recently started to look more like his old self again at the plate. Entering Tuesday, he was on an eight-game on-base streak. In five of them, he had multiple hits, including a double, a triple and his first home run in 13 games.
The Dodgers’ Mookie Betts singles to left in the first inning of Monday’s game against the Miami Marlins. (Marta Lavandier / Associated Press)
He’s not all the way back yet, still hitting just .266 on the season. What he bluntly described as a “garbage” opening month, in which batting average dipped as low as .230, remains a source of frustration, even as he has slowly started correcting some underlying issues.
“Mentally, it was challenging [for him],” Van Scoyoc siad. “Just feeling like he didn’t get the benefits of all the hard work [he put in during the offseason].”
In the midst of Betts’ slump, questions emerged about whether his move back to shortstop was having an impact on his bat; whether he could still be the same hitter while taking on a demanding defensive position.
In Betts’ view, however, shortstop has been a blessing, not a burden.
“I enjoy my process,” he said. “That’s the No. 1 thing,”
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Recalibrating his swing amid wildly fluctuating weight, on the other hand, has been a more tedious process.
At first, the ill effects of Betts’ two-week illness were not immediately evident. He was sent home from the team’s Japan trip early. But he recovered in time to collect six hits, three of them home runs, during the Dodgers’ undefeated opening homestand.
By the middle of April, Betts was also back to his pre-illness playing weight, having worked with the Dodgers’ performance staff, as well as his own personal trainer and chef, to devise a bulked-up meal plan that maximized his intake of macronutrients.
“We didn’t go the Michael Phelps route,” joked major league development integration coach Brandon McDaniel, referencing the former Olympic swimmer’s notorious 10,000-calorie diet. “But [his weight] stabilized pretty well.”
In that interim period, though, Betts’ bat speed began to suffer. After averaging only 69 mph last year, which ranked in the 13th percentile among MLB hitters according to the league’s Statcast system, it dropped to almost 67 mph during the opening month of this season.
That didn’t come as a surprise to the Dodgers’ hitting coaches, even after Betts’ gain in that metric early on this spring.
“You’re not impacting the ball the same way you were,” the Dodgers’ other hitting coach, Aaron Bates, said, “because you don’t have the weight behind it.”
But as Betts made an effort to try and start swinging harder, all he did was create mechanical flaws he has since had to correct. The biggest issue “had to do with how his arms and hands load, and how that affects the rest of his body,” Van Scoyoc said.
Fixing it has been an uphill battle.
“At first, it was cool. When I first came back, I hit a couple homers. The habits didn’t creep all the way in,” Betts said. “But then they started creeping in. And that’s what you’ve seen here recently. The product of some really bad habits from being so light.”
Over 22 games from April 2-28, Betts performed nowhere near his eight-time All-Star standards. He batted .202 with just three doubles and one home run. He was swinging at the right pitches (he struck out just nine times in those 98 plate appearances), but managed little more than soft pop-ups and routine groundouts.
“He’s one of those guys that can’t really be that far off [in his mechanics],” Bates said. “When he’s synced up right, he’s one of the best in baseball. But being that he’s 180 pounds, he doesn’t have a lot of margin for error.”
Betts still produced in other ways. Defensively, he is top-10 among MLB shortstops in fielding percentage, defensive runs saved and outs above average.
But as the Dodgers endured a team-wide malaise that plagued them for much of April, Betts’ offensive struggles loomed as a prominent factor.
“Obviously the results haven’t been there,” Betts said. “I’ve been trying to get this bad habit out.”
This past week, it has seemingly started to happen.
Betts entered Tuesday with 12 hits and 10 RBIs during his last eight games. Manager Dave Roberts has noticed “more convicted swipes” in the batter’s box. His bat speed has also started to tick back toward his pre-illness levels.
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The Dodgers’ offense, not coincidentally, has improved right along with him — the club scoring 73 runs and hitting .329 as a team over its last nine games.
That’s why, as Betts discussed the state of his game during the Dodgers’ trip this week, he didn’t sound defeated, nor resentful about his physical limitations.
He was looking past his opening month, and an illness that lasted longer than he ever expected.
“It’s hard to get lost in the results. It’s not a good place to be,” he said. “So I’m really trying to just get lost in the process and make sure I’m prepared.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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