Hindsight has made the mystery of his worst career season quite simple.
Looking back at it now, the reason was always there.
At the beginning of the year, he lost 20 pounds and developed a bad swing habit while overcompensating. It took up much of his focus when he learned a new position on the go.
There was also unfamiliar mental tension as the former MVP fell like he had never had.
There was a new process of washing away this frustration, and I accepted the failure of a 12-year veteran, handed over to a lost season, and reconstructed my mindset as autumn approached.
“I just accepted failure, so my thought process on failure has changed,” Betts said at an introspective press conference the night before the playoffs.
“Well, I tried this and it failed. I don’t know where to go now,” I used it as a positive thing and eventually turned around. ”
Of course, Betts’ full season remains a disappointment. He posted personal low marks on batting average (.258) and OPS (.732). He spent most of the summer looking at his confidence at first glance.
However, these depths have led to a regeneration of timing.
In the continuing chaos of the year, Betts finally finds a way to move on mentally.
In his final 47 games of the regular season, he hit .317, nearly doubled his home run total, jumping from 11 on August 4th to the end of 20.
During the 15-5 finish to the Dodgers schedule, he was one of the hottest batters in the lineup and posted his second .901 OPS on the team.
Betts’ production was even more prolific at the Cincinnati Reds club. He scored six hits in two games. This includes three doubles and three RBIs on the series clincher at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday night.
He then revisited the turbulent campaign once again as the team helped book a spot in the National League Division Series. His recent success comes from the grind that came before.
“I definitely went through one of the worst years of my career,” Betts said. “But I think it really made me mentally tough.”
All year round, speculation swirled around the root cause of Betts’ struggle. This left him missing the All-Star Game for the first time in a decade and was at a low bat of .231 until the first week of August.
His short stop play was the most commonly condemned public culprit. The correlation with many people seemed too obvious to ignore.
At the time, Betts pushed back. He focused on the MVP caliber numbers he posted at his 2024 position.
But this week he finally gave some credibility to the dynamics, putting the difficulties of transition in a different, but connected context.
“It’s difficult to go back and forth,” he said about the balance between learning the basics of shortstop. “It’s the behavior I learned (and first) going backwards between offense and defense.”
This was not an issue for Betts when he played the right field, which won six career Gold Globe Awards.
“When I was right, I didn’t have to do that,” Betts said. “I was just playing the right thing, and I didn’t have to think about that.”
On the other hand, in the short stop, he “had to think about everything” from how to attack the ground ball, to how to create throwing movements, to where he positioned himself for cutoff throws and relay plays.
“I was making an error I’d never made before,” Betts said. “I’ve never been in these situations.”
I listened to what my teammates said about Betts at the beginning of the season.
“Being a big league shortstop is a lot,” Freeman said in late May. “But once he controls everything, I think that’s when the blow comes back soon.”
Ultimately, that prediction came true.
By the second half of the season, Betts had stopped thinking about his path to passing through the shortstop position in the end, and developed a comfortable level where he could simply play it.
“Now when I go outside and do a short stop, I’m like going out on the right field,” Betts said. “I’m not even thinking about it. My training is good. I believe in myself. I believe in what I can. And now, just enjoy it.”
“Once Short is where I didn’t have to think about it anymore,” he added. “I was really able to think about the attack.”
Of course, the shortstop could not explain the full range of Betts’ striking problems. They began with the stomach virus that he suffered at the beginning of the season.
His strength remained reduced even after Betts regained the weight he had lost. It ticked his already overwhelming bat speed below normal. Correcting his normal swing was ineffective as he fought against a mechanical flaw that he struggled to find the answer.
“When you were traveling and doing all this, it’s hard to gain your weight and maintain your strength in the middle of the season,” he said.
It felt like one domino was continuing to bump into the next. To the point where everything was on the verge of falling apart.
“My season is over,” Betts finally declared in early August. “We have to chalk up (this) because it’s not a great season.”
But that’s exactly when everything started to change.
Moving forward, the 32-year-old decided to commit himself to a new way of thinking. “I can go out and help the boys win every night,” he said. “Get the RBI, play, do something. You have to change the focus there.”
Suddenly, if only frustration once was once, Betts began to accumulate a few wins one after another. He sacrificed the fist pump sacrifice and moved the fly and ground ball to move the base runner. He played acrobatic in defense that fueled his once dwindish confidence.
“When he said the year was lost, when he made that entry, that’s when I think it kind of flipped for him,” the manager said. “It just lets free his heart.”
It helped Roberts promised to keep Betts shortstop down the stretch. Last year, when the Dodgers returned from an injury in August, they moved their beds to the outfield.
“I take a lot of pride in it,” Betts said. “At the beginning of the season, I wasn’t sure I was going to end the season there. At one point I thought I needed to adjust because of lack of trust and so on. I didn’t know, so I’m proud to be able to make it all year round.
His bats gradually began to come. Part of the reason was simple. “I was able to finally regain my strength,” he said. But much of that was the result of hard work, with Betts not only the Dodgers hit coach, but also his former teammate and long-time swing-confident JD Martinez spending a lot of time in the cage (working with Betts on both his August road trip to Florida and a visit to Los Angeles for a bet.
“We didn’t have to try and add more power anymore,” Betts said. “I could just sway and make him do that.”
It all amounted to a lengthy process of learning to move on. From his early physical illness. From his persistent mental anguish. Unlike what he had endured before, from a set of seasonal assignments.
“Slowly, clearly and certainly,” Betts said, “It’s starting to get better and better.”
And now, entering the NLDS game one on Saturday, he is back in the leading role in the Dodgers’ second straight pursuit. Starting with a short stop, I shook a hot bat to solve the mystery of the once lost season.
“It’s never late,” he said Wednesday night. “It’s just one thing you have to keep going.
