Glenel, ARIS.-S-time around mid-August last year, Mookie best Hold Los Angeles DodgersTrainers. He evaluated what happened during the rehabilitation of a broken wrist, wiped his team’s list and before he became clearly clear: he needed to return to the right field.
For the best part of five months, Betts had been indulged in the painstaking task of learning the palace in the midst of the main league season. It was the process of humility but also active, the one he wanted to see through it. On the day he surrendered, Chris Woodward asked, at that point, a consultant who helped him intermittently in the direction of Betts during the transition. He shook hands with Bents, and told him how much he respects his efforts and thanked him for work.
“Oh, it has not ended yet,” Bates answered. “It is now over, but we will win the world series, then I go back.”
Woodward, who is now the first al -Qaeda coach in Dodgers and the coach, recalled that the conversation from the team’s spring training complex in Camelback Ranch last week and smiled while he was thinking about how these words were installed. Dodgers acquired a championship last fall, then they immediately decided that Betts, the permanent golden glove player heading to his season at the age of 32, will be short in one of the most talented baseball teams ever.
From November to February, Betts visited secondary and group schools throughout the Los Angeles region on an almost daily basis in an attempt to unify the details of the transfer that had no time to really prepare for the last season.
Pedro Montero, one of the Dodgers video coordinators, placed an iPad on a triple leg holder and aims to a camera in the direction of Betts while wearing baseball balls over and over again on the floor with a thirsty strike, then sent Woodward clips to review it from his home in Arizona. It occurs almost daily.
By the time Betts arrived in spring training, Woodward noticed the difference of “night and day” from year to year. But he still admits the difficulty of what Betts are doing, and indicated that the meaningful games will be in the end as the real referee.
The evaders on Betts praised an act that they described as non -selfish, which paved the way for both of them Teskar Hernandez and Michael Conforato To join the outer corner and thus strengthen the squad. Pits himself said that his move to Shortstop is a job to do “what I feel is the best for the team.” But it is also clear that you bear this burden-and all the guessing and the second scrutiny that will accompany him-something he wants.
He wants to face the appeal. He wants to prove everyone’s mistake. He wants to enhance his legacy.
“Moki wants to be the best in the baseball game, and I do not see why he does not want it,” said Dodgers director Dave Roberts. “I think that if you play shorts, with his racket, it gives him a better chance.”
Only 21 players Since 1900, 100 professional games in the right field and 100 professional games have been recorded in Shortstop, according to Espn Research. It is a list that has mostly assembled for lifetime useful men. Perhaps the only person who is close to following the Betts path was Tony Womack, a healthy player every day in his 29 -year -old season, and short daily in the three years that followed. But WOMACK recorded a lot of professional experience in Shorestop before that.
During his first 12 years in the professional baseball game, only Betts 13 accumulates in Shortstop, all of them in the Ralab and Low -A from 2011 to 2012. The right vein player who will turn into the most demanding sport site in his thirties – to a large extent Without previous. However, the overwhelming meaning about the evaders is that if anyone can withdraw it, then this is.
“Various Mocke”, the third rule man Max Monsey He said. “I think this type of challenge is really fun for him. I think he is really enjoying it. He had to put a lot of hard work – a lot of work that people did not see – but I think it is only such a man different when it comes to the challenge he enjoys Really. Here it will be a very good defense.
Betts entered the 2024 season as the second primary base, a position he has long sought back, but he moved to Shorestop on March 8, 12 days before the inauguration of the evaders for their season from South Korea, after issues began in the plague Javin Lux. Almost every day for the next three months, Bents put himself through a strict routine alongside his teammate Miguel Rojas The third base coach Dino Il is trying to survive in this position.
The scales were unfavorable, the scouts were generally not affected, and traditional statistics drew an unexpected image – all of which were expected. Simply put, Betts did not have actors. He hadn’t spent a lot of time in shorts, since he was a teenager at the Oving Secondary School in Nashville, Tennessee. He was trying to cram years of experience through every level of the professional baseball in the space designated for him before each game, a task that has proven impossible.
Betts made nine errors during his period in Shortstop, eight of them as a result of the wrong drawings. He often lacked the appropriate work to put himself in the best place to throw carefully across diamonds, but the evaders admired the speed that it seemed to understand other aspects of the situation that seemed more difficult for others-before the tone, the range, the completion of difficult plays.
Soon after the defeat of the evaders New York Yanxiz To win the first full championship for the season since 1988, Betts sat with the coaches of evading and executives and expressed his belief that, if you were given the appropriate time, he will discover this. And so it was.
“If Mock really wants to do something, he will do everything in his power to be an elite, a short elite,” said Brandon Gomez, General Manager of Dodgers. “I will not bet against this man.”
The first task It was defining the short Betts type. Woodward Consulting with Ryan Goins, current Los Angeles angels Infield Coach, which is one of the best Betts friends. The two agreed that he must play “Download”, attack the baseball, and make more plays with one hand and throw a large extent in the range, a method that is better suitable for a transitional football player.
During a previous period of time on the training staff in Dodgeries and Woodward – former Texas Rangers The director who joined Dodgers after he became the former first base coach in Los Angeles, Clayton McCulo, is Miami MarlesOffseason – executed the same style with Corrie SiggerAnd that was considered very long could not remain short.
“He does not like the old school, the left right, hands, and today, somewhat in its kind of things,” said Woodward. “This is not logical for him. I do not train in this way. I want them to be athlete, like the best athlete they can, so that they can use the lower half, and reach their legs, get the right direction through the baseball game to the beginning.
Dodger stadium underwent a great renewal of the club’s space over the season season, making this field unused and converts Montero and Betts into the nomads. From the second week of November to the first week of February, the two were trained at Crespi Carmelite High School near Betts’s house in Encino, California, then Sierra Canyon, Los Angeles Valley College, and finally Liwala Hai.
For several days around the New Year, Bings flew to Austin, Texas, to get a tulk tulowitzki tutelage, ALL-Star Fains All-Star and Gold Glove twice. In early January, when forest fires spread in the Los Angeles region, Bates flew to Glendel, Arizona, to train with Woodward personally.
Mostly, though, Montero was as eyes and ears on the ground and Woodward as a consultant from afar. Their sessions usually last about two hours in the morning, developed from three days a week to five and are constantly in the severity. The goal of the first two months was to hone the work skills required to make a variety of different throws, but also to give Betts a lot of actors on every imaginative land ball.
When January came, Betts began to place a detailed and effective routine that would prevent him from excessive work when games started. Each situation may be, and the scenarios of the backup of the indisputable events included – when it rains, when there was not enough time, when the pre -multiplying multiple extended for a long time – and was designed to help Betts to withstand. It was once hundreds of ground balls that were reduced to a place in the 35th neighborhood, but everything was calculated.
Last year, Pits The pomegranate was particularly difficult Freddy Freeman To arrest the first rule, it is often cut, sailing or clouds. But when Freeman joined Betts in Spring Training, he noticed fragile throws that have been constantly arrived with BackSpin and always hit the designated target. Betts was doing a better job in getting his legs under it on fighting balls in many directions. Also, Rojas said, “He found it opened.”
“Technically, we are talking about playing on Shorestop, finding your hole is very important because you throw the ball from a different location from the situation that when you throw it from the right field,” Rojas explained. “You do not throw the ball from the road above the top or at the bottom. So he finds an opening for it. He now understands that you need to throw the ball into the first rule. “
Dodgers player Super-Ot generation Enrique Hernandez Betts noticed “more loose” in the shorts of this spring. Roberts said Bings “two degrees are better” than it was last year, before the left wrist was placed in the affected list on June 17 and ended his first attempt before it is time. Before reports to spring training, Betts described himself as “a completely new person there.”
“But we will see,” he added.
Games will be the real test. At that point, Woodward said, he would significantly reach the work that he put in the past four months. Betts is very famous for himself, so Woodward made a point to remind him that, as long as his operation is sound, the deficiency is acceptable.
“This is dirt,” Woodward often tells him. “This is not perfect.”
Certainly, the evaders do not need Betts to be short. If it does not work, he can easily return to the second rule. Rojas, the upper defender whose offensive production could return Betts to the right field last season, can fill at least part -time. This is how Tommy addictionIt is possible that he will be divided at this time between the center and the second piece, and so perhaps Hayesj Kim26 -year -old midfielder who was signed from South Korea this season.
But it is clear that Betts want to give her another snapshot.
Roberts also admitted, “He definitely felt that he had not had incomplete works.”
