In hindsight, Mookie Betts made the mystery of his worst career season sound rather simple.
Looking back on it now, the reasons were right there all along.
There was the stomach virus at the start of the year, which caused him to lose 20 pounds and develop bad swing habits while overcompensating for a decline in physical strength. There was the defensive switch to shortstop, which occupied much of his focus as he learned a new position on the go.
There was also an unfamiliar mental strain, as the former MVP slumped like he never had before.
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There was a newfound process of having to flush such frustrations, forcing the 12-year veteran to accept failure, concede to a lost season, and reframe his mindset as the Dodgers approached the fall.
I just accepted failing, so my thought process on failing changed, Betts said in an introspective press conference on the eve of the playoffs.
Instead of sulking on, Well, I tried this and it failed, now I don’t know where to go, I just used it as positive things, and eventually turned.
Betts’ full season, of course, will remain a disappointment. He posted personal low-marks in batting average (.258) and OPS (.732). He spent most of the summer with his confidence seemingly shot.
But from those depths has come a well-timed rebirth.
Amid a year of continuous turmoil, Betts finally found a way to mentally move on.
Over his final 47 games of the regular season, he batted .317 and nearly doubled his home run total, jumping from 11 on Aug. 4 to 20 by the end of the term.
During the Dodgers 15-5 finish to the schedule, he was one of the lineups hottest hitters, posting a .901 OPS that was second on the team only to Shohei Ohtani.
In the clubs wild-card-round sweep of the Cincinnati Reds, Betts production was even more prolific. He had six hits in the two games, including three doubles and three RBIs in the series clincher Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium.
And afterward, having helped the team book a spot in the National League Division Series against the Philadelphia Phillies, he reflected on his turbulent campaign again attributing his recent success to the grind that came before it.
I went through arguably one of the worst years of my career, Betts said. But I think it really made me mentally tough.
All year, speculation swirled about the root causes of Betts struggles, which saw him miss the All-Star Game for the first time in a decade and bat as low as .231 through the first week of August.
His shortstop play was the most commonly blamed public culprit. The correlation, to many, seemed too obvious to ignore.
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At the time, Betts pushed back against that narrative. He noted the MVP-caliber numbers he posted during his three-month stint at the position in 2024.
But this week, he finally granted some credence to the dynamic, putting the difficulties of the transition in a different, but connected, context.
It’s hard to go back and forth, he said of the balance between learning the fundamentals of shortstop while also trying to work through his offensive scuffles. It’s a learned behavior going back [and forth] between offense and defense.
This wasnt a problem for Betts when he played right field, where he has six career Gold Glove awards.
When I was in right, I didn’t have to do that, Betts said. I was just playing right. I didn’t have to think about it.
At shortstop, on the other hand, he had to think about everything, from how to attack ground balls, to how to remake his throwing motion, to where to position himself for cutoff throws and relay plays.
I was making errors I never made before, Betts said. I had never been in these situations.
It hearkened back to something teammate Freddie Freeman said about Betts early in the season.
Its a lot to take on, to be a shortstop in the big leagues, Freeman said in late May. But once he gets everything under control, I think thats when the hitting will pick right back up.
Eventually, that prediction came true.
By the second half of the season, Betts finally stopped thinking his way through the shortstop position, and developed a comfort level that allowed him to simply play it.
Now when I go out and play shortstop, it’s like I’m going out to right field, Betts said. I don’t even think about it. My training is good. I believe in myself. I believe in what I can do. And now it’s just like, go have fun.
Once short became where I didn’t have to think about it anymore, he added, I could really think about offense.
Shortstop, of course, failed to explain the full extent of Betts hitting problems. Those started with the stomach virus he suffered at the beginning of the season, which wreaked havoc on his swing as much as his body.
Even after Betts regained the weight he lost, his strength remained diminished. It left his already underwhelming bat speed a tick lower than normal. It rendered his usual swing fixes ineffective as he battled mechanical flaws to which he struggled to find answers.
It’s just hard to gain your weight and sustain strength in the middle of a season, when you’ve been traveling and doing all these things, he said.
It felt like one domino kept bumping into the next. To the point where everything was on the verge of falling apart.
My season’s kind of over, Betts ultimately declared in early August. We’re going to have to chalk [this] up for not a great season.
That, though, is precisely when everything started to turn.
Moving forward, the 32-year-old decided then, he would commit himself to a new mindset: I can go out and help the boys win every night, he said. Get an RBI, make a play, do something. I’m going to have to shift my focus there.
Suddenly, where there was once only frustration, Betts started stacking one little victory after another. He would fist-pump sacrifice flies and ground balls that moved baserunners. He turned acrobatic plays on defense that refueled his once-dwindling confidence.
When he kind of said that the year was lost, when he made that admission, that’s when I think it sort of flipped for him, manager Dave Roberts said. Just freeing his mind up.
It helped that, down the stretch, Roberts committed to keeping Betts at shortstop; last year, the Dodgers shifted Betts to the outfield when he came back from injury in August.
I take a lot of pride in it, said Betts, who wound up leading all MLB shortstops in defensive runs saved this year. At the start of the season, I wasn’t sure I would end the season there. I thought there may have to be an adjustment at some point, from lack of trust or whatever. I just didn’t know. So I’m just proud of myself for making it all the way through the year, and actually achieving a goal that I kind of set out to do: Being a major league shortstop, and say I did it and I’m good at it.
His bat also started to gradually come around. Part of the reason was simple. I was just able to finally get my strength back, he said. But much of it was the result of hard work, with Betts spending long hours in the cage with not only the Dodgers hitting coaches, but former teammate and longtime swing confident J.D. Martinez as well (who worked with Betts during both an August road trip to Florida and a visit to Los Angeles for Betts charity pickleball tournament a few weeks later).
I didn’t really have to try and add on power anymore, Betts said. I could just swing and let it do its thing.
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All of it amounted to one long process of Betts learning to move on. From his early physical ailments. From his persistent mental anguish. From a set of season-long challenges unlike any hed previously endured.
Slowly but surely, Betts said, started to get better and better.
And now, entering Game 1 of the NLDS on Saturday, it has him back in a leading role for the Dodgers pursuit of a second straight World Series title: Starting at shortstop, swinging a hot bat, and having solved the mystery of a season that once looked lost.
Better late than never, he quipped Wednesday night. It’s just one of those things where, you’ve just gotta keep going, man So now, there’s just a different level of focus.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.