From Gold Glove outfielder to shortstop learning on the fly? Mookie Betts has never been happier
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Alden Gonzalez, ESPN Staff Writer
LOS ANGELES — It’s 1 p.m. on a searing Saturday afternoon on May 13, three hours before the first pitch of a game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres, and Mookie Betts is already dripping sweat. He stands on the left side of the Dodger Stadium infield and peers toward home plate, then darts up the middle to snatch a ground ball. He spins, fires to first base, jogs back into the area of shortstop, and then suddenly he’s off again — ranging to his right, charging a chopper, making a backhanded play and completing another throw.
Before almost every one of his games as a Dodger, this has been his daily ritual. Betts, a star right fielder who will forever be a middle infielder at heart, takes upward of 100 ground balls at shortstop and second base, a routine that dates to his days with the Boston Red Sox. It’s his way of maintaining athleticism, building arm strength and breaking up the monotony of a tedious season — but on this day, there’s a greater purpose.
Betts, 30, is preparing to make his fifth start at shortstop for the first-place Dodgers, the perennial juggernauts who have been scrambling at the sport’s most demanding position. Betts hadn’t played shortstop since his first full minor league season 11 years ago. And yet the man who navigates him through his pregame work, infield coach Dino Ebel, says he’s already “better than average” at the major league level.
“This is something that is uncharted territory, really, for me, to see somebody going from the outfield, the best at his position in the game, to come up and play above-average shortstop in a major league game, in a big series,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “I just marvel at how he doesn’t get anxious or nervous taking this on. He has a way of just embracing it.”
Betts has made around 30% of his starts at either shortstop or second base for the Dodgers this season and will probably continue to do so, unless an everyday shortstop is acquired before the end of July.
It is both a testament to Betts’ greatness and an indictment on his team’s depth at such a valuable position.
The Dodgers let Trea Turner depart via free agency last offseason and passed on all the other big-name shortstops available, partly because they wanted to try getting under the luxury tax threshold — they didn’t anyway — and partly because they wanted to give Gavin Lux an opportunity. Lux’s spring training ACL tear exposed a massive hole in the Dodgers’ vaunted player-development pipeline. Nobody was ready to come up and fill in. The Dodgers went into the season with a shortstop combination of Miguel Rojas and Chris Taylor and watched them combine for a .125/.200/.306 slash line through the first three weeks.
Betts, who famously moved from second base to the outfield in order to accommodate Dustin Pedroia in Boston, was a shortstop as a teenager at John Overton High School in Nashville, Tennessee, and has pined for opportunities to play the middle infield in Los Angeles. The Dodgers gave him 11 starts at second base from 2020 to 2022. But shortstop was never a consideration — until the middle of last month.
Lux was injured, Taylor was hurting, reinforcements were scant, and so Betts casually broached Roberts on the idea of helping out at shortstop. Within a couple of days, Roberts began to consider it. And when Rojas strained his hamstring on April 18, it became a necessity.
Betts was on paternity leave then, awaiting the arrival of his second child, but he subbed in at shortstop late on April 20 and 21 at Wrigley Field and handled two ground balls without incident. His first start was planned for April 23. Clayton Kershaw, who tends to induce a lot of grounders to the left side, was scheduled as the starting pitcher, and Roberts wanted to get all three of his left-handed-hitting outfielders into the lineup against Chicago Cubs right-hander Marcus Stroman. Roberts sent Kershaw a text message revealing his plan and asking for approval. Kershaw wrote back in less than a minute.
Let’s do it.
Betts got four grounders hit in his direction that day — one up the middle, another slightly to his right and two others directly at him — and took care of them with ease. His next five ground balls over the course of three weeks went the same way. Then came his first error, in the third inning of Saturday’s game. Betts charged a two-hopper off the bat of speedy Fernando Tatis Jr. and threw so wide of first base that Freddie Freeman didn’t even bother stretching for it. But Tatis never scored, and Betts charged another grounder two innings later and handled it perfectly.
This, he believes, is where his growth shows up. These days, his mind is more at ease.
“As I’ve gotten older, I’m just trying to take on less stress and enjoy the game,” Betts said. “I’ve been playing it for so long, and I just want to enjoy it. I don’t want to stress about it.”
Getting there has been a process. Betts says he played shortstop apprehensively in the early portion of his professional career, often afraid to make mistakes, and letting failure seep into his mind prematurely. He was unfairly hard on himself while navigating through his time with the Red Sox, despite a six-year run that included four Gold Gloves, three Silver Sluggers, an MVP and a World Series championship. Through his first three summers in L.A., he found himself “trying to live up to who I was.” It’s different now.
The 2023 season, Betts said, marks the first time he feels as if he is playing baseball with a carefree attitude, the type he believes has helped him embrace this part-time role at shortstop. He credits fatherhood, reaching his 30s, listening to audiobooks about positive thinking and heeding his wife’s advice about seeing the bigger picture.
“I’m just not the same person I was when I was 28. I’m not the same person I was when I was 29. I’ve got two kids, man, I’ve got a wife and I’ve got priorities,” Betts said. “I’m not saying baseball’s not a priority. But, you know, life — I’ve got life to attend to. It’s what I’ve become. You see how hard I work. I’m not not working hard. It’s that when the game starts, I’m not stressing. When I wake up in the morning, I’m not stressing. I’m just enjoying my time.”
Betts is in the midst of another one of his hot stretches, with five home runs and a .970 OPS in May. His slash line as a shortstop or second baseman — he’s made seven appearances at short and 10 at second — sits at .320/.414/.680, and those who know him don’t see it as a coincidence. Baseball tends to come easily to Betts, regardless of whatever stress he used to tack onto it, and so he seeks stimulation wherever he can find it. It keeps him engaged. Returning to the middle infield — particularly shortstop, to him the more foreign and more demanding of the two — is currently providing it.
“If you say he can’t do something, he’s going to prove you wrong,” Ebel said. “He loves the challenge.”
Turner, now with the Philadelphia Phillies, said he believes Betts could be “as good as anybody” if he played shortstop on a regular basis. Turner used to watch the aggression with which Betts cut off base hits to prevent doubles and saw a middle infielder’s skill set translated to the corner outfield. It’s by design.
“That’s why I go in and go play short and go do things at short, because if you don’t use it you lose it,” Betts said. “Go be an athlete. And then when I go to right [field], I turn on all those athletic muscles and I can go catch those fly balls and do all those things. But if I just stood in right all the time, I might lose some of those things.”
Rojas and Taylor remain superior defenders to Betts but are nowhere near as dynamic offensively. With J.D. Martinez absorbing most of the time at designated hitter, Betts starting in a middle-infield spot — particularly shortstop, given the recent production of rookie second baseman Miguel Vargas — creates a path for Roberts to squeeze David Peralta, Jason Heyward and James Outman into the same lineup against some of the tougher right-handed pitchers.
It’s not ideal, but it’s working.
“He has certainly earned my trust,” Roberts said of Betts. “He enjoys it, and he’s good at it.”
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Jorge Castillo
NEW YORK — Giancarlo Stanton, one of the first known adopters of the torpedo bat, declined Tuesday to say whether he believes using it last season caused the tendon ailments in both elbows that forced him to begin this season on the injured list.
Last month, Stanton alluded to “bat adjustments” he made last season as a possible reason for the epicondylitis, commonly known as tennis elbow, he’s dealing with.
“You’re not going to get the story you’re looking for,” Stanton said. “So, if that’s what you guys want, that ain’t going to happen.”
Stanton said he will continue using the torpedo bat when he returns from injury. The 35-year-old New York Yankees slugger, who has undergone multiple rounds of platelet-rich plasma injections to treat his elbows, shared during spring training that season-ending surgery on both elbows was a possibility. But he has progressed enough to recently begin hitting off a Trajekt — a pitching robot that simulates any pitcher’s windup, arm angle and arsenal. However, he still wouldn’t define his return as “close.”
He said he will first have to go on a minor league rehab assignment at an unknown date for an unknown period. It won’t start in the next week, he added.
“This is very unique,” Stanton said. “I definitely haven’t missed a full spring before. So, it just depends on my timing, really, how fast I get to feel comfortable in the box versus live pitching.”
While the craze of the torpedo bat (also known as the bowling pin bat) has swept the baseball world since it was revealed Saturday — while the Yankees were blasting nine home runs against the Milwaukee Brewers — that a few members of the Yankees were using one, the modified bat already had quietly spread throughout the majors in 2024. Both Stanton and former Yankees catcher Jose Trevino, now with the Cincinnati Reds, were among players who used the bats last season after being introduced to the concept by Aaron Leanhardt, an MIT-educated physicist and former minor league hitting coordinator for the organization.
Anthony Volpe, Jazz Chisholm Jr., Cody Bellinger, Paul Goldschmidt and Austin Wells were among the Yankees who used torpedo bats during their season-opening sweep of the Brewers.
Stanton explained he has changed bats before. He said he has usually adjusted the length. Sometimes, he opts for lighter bats at the end of the long season. In the past, when knuckleballers were more common in the majors, he’d opt for heavier lumber.
Last year, he said he simply chose his usual bat but with a different barrel after experimenting with a few models.
“I mean, it makes a lot of sense,” Stanton said. “But it’s, like, why hasn’t anyone thought of it in 100-plus years? So, it’s explained simply and then you try it and as long as it’s comfortable in your hands [it works]. We’re creatures of habit, so the bat’s got to feel kind of like a glove or an extension of your arm.”
Stanton went on to lead the majors with an average bat velocity of 81.2 mph — nearly 3 mph ahead of the competition. He had a rebound, but not spectacular, regular season in which he batted .233 with 27 home runs and a .773 OPS before clubbing seven home runs in 14 playoff games.
“It’s not like [it was] unreal all of a sudden for me,” Stanton said.
Yankees manager Aaron Boone described the torpedo bats “as the evolution of equipment” comparable to getting fitted for new golf clubs. He said the organization is not pushing players to use them and insisted the science is more complicated than just picking a bat with a different barrel.
“There’s a lot more to it than, ‘I’ll take the torpedo bat on the shelf over there — 34 [inches], 32 [ounces],'” Boone said. “Our guys are way more invested in it than that. And really personalized, really work with our players in creating this stuff. But it’s equipment evolving.”
As players around the majors order torpedo bats in droves after the Yankees’ barrage over the weekend — they clubbed a record-tying 13 homers in two games against the Brewers — Boone alluded to the notion that, though everyone is aware of the concept, not every organization can optimize its usage.
“You’re trying to just, where you can on the margins, move the needle a little bit,” Boone said. “And that’s really all you’re going to do. I don’t think this is some revelation to where we’re going to be; it’s not related to the weekend that we had, for example. Like, I don’t think it’s that. Maybe in some cases, for some players, it may help them incrementally. That’s how I view it.”
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Eli Lederman
USC secured the commitment of former Oregon defensive tackle pledge Tomuhini Topui on Tuesday, a source told ESPN, handing the Trojans their latest recruiting victory in the 2026 cycle over the Big Ten rival Ducks.
Topui, ESPN’s No. 3 defensive tackle and No. 72 overall recruit in the 2026 class, spent five and half months committed to Oregon before pulling his pledge from the program on March 27. Topui attended USC’s initial spring camp practice that afternoon, and seven days later the 6-foot-4, 295-pound defender gave the Trojans his pledge to become the sixth ESPN 300 defender in the program’s 2026 class.
Topui’s commitment gives USC its 10th ESPN 300 pledge this cycle — more than any other program nationally — and pulls a fourth top-100 recruit into the impressive defensive class the Trojans are building this spring. Alongside Topui, USC’s defensive class includes in-state cornerbacks R.J. Sermons (No. 26 in ESPN Junior 300) and Brandon Lockhart (No. 77); four-star outside linebacker Xavier Griffin (No. 27) out of Gainesville, Georgia; and two more defensive line pledges between Jaimeon Winfield (No. 143) and Simote Katoanga (No. 174).
The Trojans are working to reestablish their local recruiting presence in the 2026 class under newly hired general manager Chad Bowden. Topui not only gives the Trojans their 11th in-state commit in the cycle, but his pledge represents a potentially important step toward revamping the program’s pipeline to perennial local powerhouse Mater Dei High School, too.
Topui will enter his senior season this fall at Mater Dei, the program that has produced a long line of USC stars including Matt Leinart, Matt Barkley and Amon-Ra St. Brown. However, if Topui ultimately signs with the program later this year, he’ll mark the Trojans’ first Mater Dei signee since the 2022 cycle, when USC pulled three top-300 prospects — Domani Jackson, Raleek Brown and C.J. Williams — from the high school program based in Santa Ana, California.
Topui’s flip to the Trojans also adds another layer to a recruiting rivalry rekindling between USC and Oregon in the 2026 cycle.
Tuesday’s commitment comes less than two months after coach Lincoln Riley and the Trojans flipped four-star Oregon quarterback pledge Jonas Williams, ESPN’s No. 2 dual-threat quarterback in 2026. USC is expected to continue targeting several Ducks commits this spring, including four-star offensive tackle Kodi Greene, another top prospect out of Mater Dei.
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