Marly Rivera is a writer for ESPNdeportes.com and ESPN.com.
NEW YORK — Manager Rocco Baldelli was ejected during the Minnesota Twins‘ 6-1 loss to the New York Yankees on Saturday after an excess rosin controversy concerning starting pitcher Domingo Germán.
First-base umpire and crew chief James Hoye had a lengthy conversation with Germán during an extensive hand and glove checkup in the middle of the third inning. Hoye explained after the game that Germán appeared to have excess rosin on his hands, and he asked him to clean them after the top of the third.
Germán came back out in the top of the fourth inning and Hoye still noticed tackiness.
“I checked them again, and I go, ‘I just told you to clean this up,’ and there was still some tackiness on his pinkie,” Hoye explained. “Then the [Yankees] interpreter came out, and [New York manager Aaron] Boone came out, and said, the interpreter goes, ‘He washed his hands. He cleaned it up.’ And I go, ‘Yeah, but it’s still tacky.'”
Hoye said that at that point, according to procedure, he had another crew member, second-base umpire D.J. Reyburn, check on whether Germán was using a sticky foreign substance that could potentially affect the ball flight or if the tackiness was derived from using a rosin bag.
“We all agreed that it’s no,” Hoye said of Germán using a foreign substance. “In that situation, it was more of a directive by me that he didn’t clean it all the way up. It wasn’t a foreign substance that affected the flight of the ball. And then I went over to Rocco. And he felt like this was a stand he needed to make and so he was ejected from the game.”
Hoye added: “In that situation there, it was like, this is not an ejectable offense because we didn’t feel it rose to the foreign substance standard of affecting the flight, affecting his pitching. That’s why we didn’t eject.”
Nonetheless, Baldelli said he “strongly disagreed” with Hoye’s crew not ejecting Germán, with his main objection being that the Yankees starter did not comply with the umpire instructions and was allowed to stay in the game, notching a career-high 11 strikeouts over 6 1/3 innings pitched.
“The pitcher was warned or asked to clean off the rosin that was on his hand,” Baldelli said. “Sometimes, when you use rosin, it will get especially tacky. He was warned, he didn’t fully comply with the warning, from what I was told. And was still allowed to keep pitching. That’s it. I just don’t agree with that in principle. … I didn’t like that he was able to just kind of walk past everyone after being confronted for the second time in the game, and [the umpires] allowed him to just keep pitching.”
In terms of Baldelli’s point of view, Hoye specified that the Twins’ skipper was incorrect because Germán was not found to have been using an illegal substance, and that he “blended the foreign substance argument with the argument of me telling him to clean it and he didn’t.”
Germán described the on-field discussion with Hoye as “intense” and admitted that he was worried about an ejection. Germán also said he was glad that the umpires were able to “reason” with him as he explained that he does not use the rosin bag on the mound, but as he departs the dugout in between innings.
“There was a moment there I felt that things were going to get out of hand. But I was able to explain it and tell them I have a rosin bag that’s in the area of the dugout where I sit all the time,” Germán said. “And [Hoye] was able to listen to what I was saying and discussed it with the rest of the umpires, and they said, ‘OK, fine. Go back out there and pitch.'”
Boone said the umpires explained that Germán had too much rosin on his hands, in a way that it was “enough to raise a flag,” which is why he was asked to wash them.
“[Germán] washed his hands off but before he goes out [for the fourth inning] he hits the rosin. He doesn’t go to the rosin a lot on the mound, which was something that got their attention,” Boone said. “They didn’t see anything. There was tackiness from rosin, but he doesn’t hit the rosin out there, but he hits the rosin [in the dugout] before he comes out. So, it was just the level that caught [the umpire’s] attention.”
ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the L.A. Rams for ESPN from 2016 to 2018 and the L.A. Angels for MLB.com from 2012 to 2016.
GLENDALE, Ariz. — Sometime around mid-August last year, Mookie Betts convened with the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ coaches. He had taken stock of what transpired while he rehabbed a broken wrist, surveyed his team’s roster and accepted what had become plainly obvious: He needed to return to right field.
For the better part of five months, Betts had immersed himself in the painstaking task of learning shortstop in the midst of a major league season. It was a process that humbled him but also invigorated him, one he had desperately wanted to see through. On the day he gave it up, Chris Woodward, at that point an adviser who had intermittently helped guide Betts through the transition, sought him out. He shook Betts’ hand, told him how much he respected his efforts and thanked him for the work.
“Oh, it ain’t over yet,” Betts responded. “For now it’s over, but we’re going to win the World Series, and then I’m coming back.”
Woodward, now the Dodgers’ full-time first-base coach and infield instructor, recalled that conversation from the team’s spring training complex at Camelback Ranch last week and smiled while thinking about how those words had come to fruition. The Dodgers captured a championship last fall, then promptly determined that Betts, the perennial Gold Glove outfielder heading into his age-32 season, would be the every-day shortstop on one of the most talented baseball teams ever assembled.
From November to February, Betts visited high school and collegiate infields throughout the L.A. area on an almost daily basis in an effort to solidify the details of a transition he did not have time to truly prepare for last season.
Pedro Montero, one of the Dodgers’ video coordinators, placed an iPad onto a tripod and aimed its camera in Betts’ direction while he repeatedly pelted baseballs into the ground with a fungo bat, then sent Woodward the clips to review from his home in Arizona. The three spoke almost daily.
By the time Betts arrived in spring training, Woodward noticed a “night and day” difference from one year to the next. But he still acknowledges the difficulty of what Betts is undertaking, and he noted that meaningful games will ultimately serve as the truest arbiter.
The Dodgers have praised Betts for an act they described as unselfish, one that paved the way for both Teoscar Hernandez and Michael Conforto to join their corner outfield and thus strengthen their lineup. Betts himself has said his move to shortstop is a function of doing “what I feel like is best for the team.” But it’s also clear that shouldering that burden — and all the second-guessing and scrutiny that will accompany it — is something he wants.
He wants to be challenged. He wants to prove everybody wrong. He wants to bolster his legacy.
“Mookie wants to be the best player in baseball, and I don’t see why he wouldn’t want that,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “I think if you play shortstop, with his bat, that gives him a better chance.”
ONLY 21 PLAYERS since 1900 have registered 100 career games in right field and 100 career games at shortstop, according to ESPN Research. It’s a list compiled mostly of lifelong utility men. The only one among them who came close to following Betts’ path might have been Tony Womack, an every-day right fielder in his age-29 season and an every-day shortstop in the three years that followed. But Womack had logged plenty of professional shortstop experience before then.
Through his first 12 years in professional baseball, Betts accumulated just 13 starts at shortstop, all of them in rookie ball and Low-A from 2011 to 2012. His path — as a no-doubt Hall of Famer and nine-time Gold Glove right fielder who will switch to possibly the sport’s most demanding position in his 30s — is largely without precedent. And yet the overwhelming sense around the Dodgers is that if anyone can pull it off, it’s him.
“Mookie’s different,” third baseman Max Muncy said. “I think this kind of challenge is really fun for him. I think he just really enjoys it. He’s had to put in a lot of hard work — a lot of work that people haven’t seen — but I just think he’s such a different guy when it comes to the challenge of it that he’s really enjoying it. When you look at how he approaches it, he’s having so much fun trying to get as good as he can be. There’s not really any question in anyone’s mind here that he’s going to be a very good defensive shortstop.”
Betts entered the 2024 season as the primary second baseman, a position to which he had long sought a return, but transitioned to shortstop on March 8, 12 days before the Dodgers would open their season from South Korea, after throwing issues began to plague Gavin Lux. Almost every day for the next three months, Betts put himself through a rigorous pregame routine alongside teammate Miguel Rojas and third-base coach Dino Ebel in an effort to survive at the position.
The metrics were unfavorable, scouts were generally unimpressed and traditional statistics painted an unflattering picture — all of which was to be expected. Simply put, Betts did not have the reps. He hadn’t spent significant time at shortstop since he was a teenager at Overton High School in Nashville, Tennessee. He was attempting to cram years of experience through every level of professional baseball into the space allotted to him before each game, a task that proved impossible.
Betts committed nine errors during his time at shortstop, eight of them the result of errant throws. He often lacked the proper footwork to put himself in the best position to throw accurately across the diamond, but the Dodgers were impressed by how quickly he seemed to grasp other aspects of the position that seemed more difficult for others — pre-pitch timing, range, completion of difficult plays.
Shortly after the Dodgers defeated the New York Yankees to win their first full-season championship since 1988, Betts sat down with Dodgers coaches and executives and expressed his belief that, if given the proper time, he would figure it out. And so it was.
“If Mook really wants to do something, he’s going to do everything he can to be an elite, elite shortstop,” Dodgers general manager Brandon Gomes said. “I’m not going to bet against that guy.”
THE FIRST TASK was determining what type of shortstop Betts would be. Woodward consulted with Ryan Goins, the current Los Angeles Angels infield coach who is one of Betts’ best friends. The two agreed that he should play “downhill,” attacking the baseball, making more one-handed plays and throwing largely on the run, a style that fit better for a transitioning outfielder.
During a prior stint on the Dodgers’ coaching staff, Woodward — the former Texas Rangers manager who rejoined the Dodgers staff after Los Angeles’ previous first-base coach, Clayton McCullough, became the Miami Marlins‘ manager in the offseason — implemented the same style with Corey Seager, who was widely deemed too tall to remain a shortstop.
“He doesn’t love the old-school, right-left, two-hands, make-sure-you-get-in-front-of-the-ball type of thing,” Woodward said of Betts. “It doesn’t make sense to him. And I don’t coach that way. I want them to be athletic, like the best athlete they can possibly be, so that way they can use their lower half, get into their legs, get proper direction through the baseball to line to first. And that’s what Mookie’s really good at.”
Dodger Stadium underwent a major renovation of its clubhouse space over the offseason, making the field unusable and turning Montero and Betts into nomads. From the second week of November through the first week of February, the two trained at Crespi Carmelite High School near Betts’ home in Encino, California, then Sierra Canyon, Los Angeles Valley College and, finally, Loyola High.
For a handful of days around New Year’s, Betts flew to Austin, Texas, to get tutelage from Troy Tulowitzki, the five-time All-Star and two-time Gold Glove Award winner whose mechanics Betts was drawn to. In early January, when wildfires spread through the L.A. area, Betts flew to Glendale, Arizona, to train with Woodward in person.
Mostly, though, it was Montero as the eyes and ears on the ground and Woodward as the adviser from afar. Their sessions normally lasted about two hours in the morning, evolving from three days a week to five and continually ramping up in intensity. The goal for the first two months was to hone the footwork skills required to make a variety of different throws, but also to give Betts plenty of reps on every ground ball imaginable.
When January came, Betts began to carve out a detailed, efficient routine that would keep him from overworking when the games began. It accounted for every situation, included backup scenarios for uncontrollable events — when it rained, when there wasn’t enough time, when pregame batting practice stretched too long — and was designed to help Betts hold up. What was once hundreds of ground balls was pared down to somewhere in the neighborhood of 35, but everything was accounted for.
LAST YEAR, BETTS’ throws were especially difficult for Freddie Freeman to catch at first base, often cutting or sailing or darting. But when Freeman joined Betts in spring training, he noticed crisp throws that consistently arrived with backspin and almost always hit the designated target. Betts was doing a better job of getting his legs under him on batted balls hit in a multitude of directions. Also, Rojas said, he “found his slot.”
“Technically, talking about playing shortstop, finding your slot is very important because you’re throwing the ball from a different position than when you throw it from right field,” Rojas explained. “You’re not throwing the ball from way over the top or on the bottom. So he’s finding a slot that is going to work for him. He’s understanding now that you need a slot to throw the ball to first base, you need a slot to throw the ball to second base, you need a slot to throw the ball home and from the side.”
Dodgers super-utility player Enrique Hernandez has noticed a “more loose” Betts at shortstop this spring. Roberts said Betts is “two grades better” than he was last year, before a sprained left wrist placed him on the injured list on June 17 and prematurely ended his first attempt. Before reporting to spring training, Betts described himself as “a completely new person over there.”
“But we’ll see,” he added.
The games will be the real test. At that point, Woodward said, it’ll largely come down to trusting the work he has put in over the past four months. Betts is famously hard on himself, and so Woodward has made it a point to remind him that, as long as his process is sound, imperfection is acceptable.
“This is dirt,” Woodward will often tell him. “This isn’t perfect.”
The Dodgers certainly don’t need Betts to be their shortstop. If it doesn’t work out, he can easily slide back to second base. Rojas, the superior defender whose offensive production prompted Betts’ return to right field last season, can fill in on at least a part-time basis. So can Tommy Edman, who at this point will probably split his time between center field and second base, and so might Hyeseong Kim, the 26-year-old middle infielder who was signed out of South Korea this offseason.
But it’s clear Betts wants to give it another shot.
As Roberts acknowledged, “He certainly felt he had unfinished business.”
LAKELAND, Fla. — Detroit Tigers outfielder Akil Baddoo had surgery to repair a broken bone in his right hand and will miss the start of the regular season.
Manager A.J. Hinch said Friday that Baddoo had more tests done after some continued wrist soreness since the start of spring training. Those tests revealed the hamate hook fracture in his right hand that was surgically repaired Thursday.
Baddoo, 26, who has been with the Tigers since 2021, is at spring training as a non-roster player. He was designated for assignment in December after Detroit signed veteran right-hander Alex Cobb to a $15 million, one-year contract. Baddoo cleared waivers and was outrighted to Triple-A Toledo.
Cobb is expected to miss the start of the season after an injection to treat hip inflammation that developed as the right-hander was throwing at the start of camp. He has had hip surgery twice.
Baddoo hit .137 with two homers and five RBIs in 31 games last season. The left-hander has a .226 career average with 28 homers and 103 RBI in 340 games.
After the Tigers acquired him from Minnesota in the Rule 5 draft at the winter meetings in December 2020, Baddoo hit .259 with 13 homers, 55 RBIs, 18 stolen bases and a .330 on-base percentage in 124 games as a rookie in 2021. Those are all career bests.
Roberts said he had spoken with Miller, who was still in concussion protocol after getting struck by a 105.5 mph liner hit by Chicago Cubs first baseman Michael Busch in the first game of spring training Thursday.
The manager said Miller indicated that there was no fracture or any significant bruising.
“He said in his words, ‘I have a hard head.’ He was certainly in good spirits,” Roberts said.
Miller immediately fell to the ground while holding his head, but quickly got up on his knees as medical staff rushed onto the field. The 25-year-old right-hander was able to walk off the field on his own.
“He feels very confident that he can kind of pick up his throwing program soon,” said Roberts, who was unsure of that timing. “But he’s just got to keep going through the concussion protocol just to make sure that we stay on the right track.”
Miller entered spring training in the mix for a spot in the starting rotation. He had a 2-4 record with an 8.52 ERA over 13 starts last season, after going 11-4 with a 3.76 in 22 starts as a rookie in 2023.