LOS ANGELES — Very few leadoff hitters have put collectively a season just like the one Mookie Betts is having. Really, only a few leadoff hitters have put collectively a profession like Betts’.
The All-Star hit a leadoff residence run within the Dodgers’ 11-8 loss to the Padres on Monday evening at Dodger Stadium, his twelfth leadoff homer of 2023 and the forty eighth of his profession. He is now one shy of tying the file for many leadoff homers in a season (set by Alfonso Soriano in 2003), and he’s tied with Ian Kinsler for fifth all time.
After falling behind shortly to Padres starter Pedro Avila within the Dodgers’ first at-bat of the sport, Betts linked with an 0-2 upper-half changeup, which he drove a Statcast-projected 396 ft to left discipline for his thirty ninth homer of the season. One extra would give Betts the primary 40-homer season of his profession.
The lengthy ball additionally gave Betts his a hundredth RBI of the season, making him simply the third participant in AL/NL historical past with not less than 100 RBIs out of the leadoff spot.
“Our offense starts with Mookie,” supervisor Dave Roberts stated. “He gets on base, he can slug and you don’t see too many leadoff hitters driving 100 runs in a season. What he’s doing with the slug really is unprecedented.”
Betts picked up three extra RBIs within the third inning, when he got here up with the bases loaded and lined a protracted double to left-center discipline — which a fan reached over the wall to catch. The umpires decided that the ball wouldn’t have left the yard, however that it was deep sufficient for all three runners to have scored.
That introduced Betts’ RBI complete on the season to 103, which ties the AL/NL file for many from the leadoff spot in a season, set by Charlie Blackmon in 2017. With 19 video games remaining, Betts appears all however sure to interrupt — and transfer effectively previous — that mark. (Darin Erstad is the third leadoff hitter with 100 RBIs, with precisely that quantity for the 2000 Angels.)
Now in his fourth yr with the Dodgers, Betts is placing up his finest numbers in L.A. but — and numbers akin to his 2018 American League MVP marketing campaign. It’s trying more and more like this yr’s NL MVP race is squarely between him and the Braves’ Ronald Acuña Jr., a neck-and-neck contest more likely to go right down to the wire.
For a second this previous week, Betts’ quest to place the ending touches on his bid appeared prefer it is perhaps derailed. He fouled a ball off his left foot on Thursday in Miami, resulting in him leaving the stadium on crutches and lacking the primary two video games of the Dodgers’ weekend sequence in D.C. But Betts felt effectively sufficient to return to the lineup on Sunday, when he went 0-for-4 with a stroll. His 2-for-4, four-RBI effort on Monday was a pleasant reassurance that he hadn’t misplaced his rhythm.
“When he feels right and feels healthy, there’s just not many guys that can do what he does,” stated Roberts. “[He] took a couple days off and [we got] him back, and he just picked right back up where he left off.”
Although their magic quantity to clinch the NL West stay unchanged with the D-backs beating the Mets on Monday, the Dodgers are doubtless a matter of days away from claiming their eleventh division title previously 12 seasons. Betts is a significant purpose why they’re in that place — and their hopes for postseason success very a lot hinge on how he’s in a position to set the tone within the leadoff spot. And regardless of the loss, Monday was a reminder of his capacity to try this like nobody else within the sport.
“It’s not just Mookie, but certainly, he’s a guy that jump-starts us,” stated Roberts. “And when he’s swinging the bat, impacting the game like he is, it certainly creates opportunities for everybody else. I know Freddie [Freeman] feeds off of that and everyone on down feeds off what Mookie does.”
Content Source: www.mlb.com