PHOENIX — Mookie Betts has been in spring training for less than three weeks, and he already feels the difference.
With his health. With his swing. With his mind.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said he believes Betts will once again be an MVP-caliber offensive player this season, and Betts is now convinced of that, too.
“That’s what I expect,” Betts said. “I haven’t felt this way in a long time.”
By this point in a typical camp, Betts would’ve taken a thousand swings in a cage session to remedy his swing.
However, Betts said, “I haven’t had any bad days in the cage. Haven’t had any bad days (in) BP.”
“And now I’m just cruising. I’m just cruising and ready to go.”
How the 33-year-old Betts feels is a result of drastic changes he made to his offseason training regimen. The Dodgers spoke to him about scaling back his workload so that he could recover from another World Series run.
Was that hard to do for a workaholic like Betts?
“I enjoy working, and I enjoy chilling,” he said. “So whichever one, I was cool either way.”
The plan laid out for him by the Dodgers included a delayed start to the exhibition season. Betts didn’t play in the first eight days of the Cactus League season. He made his spring debut Sunday against the Angels, logging four innings at shortstop. He was hitless in two at-bats.
Betts said he was open to the Dodgers’ suggestions, especially after a season in which he batted a career-low .258.
“I think you just kind of get to a point where there’s nothing really more you can do,” Betts said. “I mean, what am I (going to do), work harder?”
Betts spent the previous two seasons learning how to play shortstop, a position he hadn’t played since high school. By the end of last season, he was a Gold Glove finalist.
“I put in so much work,” Betts said. “At some point, you just gotta let it do its thing. I mean, it’s only so many ground balls you can really take. I think I took enough of them last year.”
Offensively, Betts said he’s strived to return to the basics.
“Just going back to what I do best and really just honing in on it instead of trying to fix problems,” he said.
By stripping down his swing, Betts said, “I learned a lot about myself. I learned a lot about how I operate. I was able to get into the right headspace. Once I was able to get in the right headspace and stay there, I haven’t been searching.”
Which isn’t to say he hasn’t tried to make new discoveries.
In an effort to strengthen his shoulder and improve his throwing motion, Betts has taken up Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s javelin-throwing routine.
“I think the whole world is impressed with his throwing motion,” Betts said.
The day after Yamamoto boarded a flight to join the Japanese national team to prepare for the World Baseball Classic, his longtime trainer was still in the Dodgers’ camp. Osamu Yada was here to work with Betts.
“He’s good with his hands,” Yada said of Betts in Japanese. “He has a lot of ability. I think if he does it regularly, more of his ability will come out.”
Betts started training with Yada in camp last year, their work then focused more on his body movements.
“When it’s baseball, baseball, baseball, your muscles can get tight,” Yada said.
Yada downplayed his role in Betts’ training. He said he wanted Betts to feel as if he was playing more than he was training. Yada’s theory was that in such an environment, Betts might be able to rediscover natural body motions that he might have forgotten over the years.
“I want him to go back to feeling the way he did when he was a boy playing baseball,” Yada said.
Betts certainly sounds as if he’s more at peace. He sounds as if he’s ready to reclaim his place as one of the best players in baseball.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: nypost.com
