Why Mookie Betts decided to return to the Campocorto in 2025
After an interrupted attempt last year, Mookie Betts is again the head of the Dodgers, and this time has a plan.
Glendale, Arizona. In mid -August last year, Mookie Betts met with Los Angeles Dodgers coaches. He had taken stock of what happened as he recovered from a wrist fracture, had examined his team’s squad and had accepted what had become clearly obvious: he needed to return to the right garden.
For almost five months, Betts had immersed himself in the arduous task of learning to be campocorto in the middle of the Major Leagues. It was a process that made him feel humble, but he also vigorized, a process that had desperately wanted to carry out. The day he gave up, Chris Woodwardat that time an advisor who had intermittently helped guide Betts in the transition, went to look for him. He shake hands with Betts, told him how much he respected his efforts and thanked him for the work.
“Oh, it’s not over,” Betts replied. “For now, but we will win the World Seriesand then I will come back. “
Woodward, now First Base Coach and Full -Time Infield Instructor of the Dodgers, recalled that conversation in the spring training complex of the team in Camelback Ranch last week and smiled at the thought of how those words had come true. The Dodgers won a championship last autumn and then quickly decided that Betts, the perennial gardener Gold glove That he was preparing for his 32 -year -old season, it would be every day’s campocort in one of the most talented baseball teams that has ever gathered.
From November to February, Betts visited the infields of High School and universities throughout the Los Angeles area almost daily in an effort to solidify the details of a transition for which he did not have time to really prepare last season.
Pedro Monteroone of the video coordinators of the Dodgers, placed an iPad on a tripod and pointed the camera towards Betts while hitting it repeatedly. Then he sent the videos to Woodward to check them from his home in Arizona. The three spoke almost daily.
When Betts reached spring training, Woodward noticed a difference “overnight” from one year to another. But he still recognizes the difficulty of what Betts is doing and pointed out that important games will ultimately serve as the most true referee.
The Dodgers have praised Betts by an act that they described as selfless, that they raided the way for both Teoscar Hernández and Michael for comfort to join their corner garden and thus reinforce their alignment. Betts himself has said that his passage to the campocorto is a function of doing “what I feel is better for the team.” But it is also clear that assuming that burden – and all the doubts and scrutiny that will accompany it – is something he wants.
He wants them to challenge him. He wants to show that everyone is wrong. He wants to reinforce his legacy.
“Mookie wants to be the best baseball player and I don’t see why I wouldn’t want to be,” said the manager of the Dodgers, Dave Roberts. “I think, if you play from Campocorto, with his bat, that gives him more possibilities.”
Only 21 players Since 1900 they have registered 100 games in their career in the right garden and 100 games in the short field, according to AM850 Research. It is a list composed mostly by versatile players of a lifetime. The only one who was close to following Betts’s path could have been Tony Womacka regular right gardener in its 29 -year -old season and a usual campocort in the next three years. But Womack had already accumulated a lot of experience as a professional campocort before that.
During his first 12 years in professional baseball, Betts accumulated only 13 openings such as Campocorto, all of them in the rookie leagues and in the Low-A League from 2011 to 2012. His career, as undoubtedly a member of the Hall of Fame And nine times winner of the gold glove as a right gardener who will change to what is possibly the most demanding position of sport at 30 years, he is not precedents. And yet, the generalized sensation in the Dodgers is that, if someone can get it, it is him.
“Mookie is different,” said the third base Max Muncy. “I think this type of challenge is really fun for him. I think he simply enjoys it. He has had to strive a lot, a lot of work that people have not seen, but I think it is such a different guy when it comes to the challenge that really He is enjoying.
Betts began the 2024 season as a second main base, a position he had sought to return for a long time, but became a campocorto on March 8, 12 days before the Dodgers opened their season from South Korea, after Gavin Lux will begin to have problems with his shots. Almost every day during the next three months, Betts underwent a rigorous routine prior to the game along with his teammate Miguel Rojas and the third -base coach Dino Ebel in an effort to survive in the position.
The metrics were unfavorable, the scouts were not impressed and traditional statistics painted a little flattering panorama, all of which was expected. In a nutshell, Betts did not have the repetitions. He had not spent much time in the campocorto since he was a teenager at Overton high school in Nashville, Tennessee. He tried to put years of experience at all levels of professional baseball in the space assigned before each game, a task that was impossible.
Betts made nine mistakes during his stage as a campocorto, eight of them as a result of erroneous releases. He often lacked the appropriate feet game to put himself in the best position to launch precisely through the diamond, but the Dodgers were impressed by the speed with which he seemed to understand other aspects of the position that seemed more difficult for others: synchronization Prior to the launch, scope, completion of difficult plays.
Shortly after the Dodgers defeated the New York Yankees to win their first full seasonal championship since 1988, Betts met with the coaches and executives of the Dodgers and expressed his conviction that, if the right time was given, what I would discover. And so it was.
“If Mook really wants to do something, he will do everything possible to be an elite campocort,” said the general manager of the Dodgers, Brandon Gomes. “I will not bet against that type.”
The first task It was to determine what type of campocorto would be Betts. Woodward consulted with Ryan Goinsthe current picture of Los Angeles Angels, who is one of Betts’s best friends. Both agreed that he had to play “in descent”, attacking the ball, making more plays with one hand and throwing a large extent in the race, a style that fit better for a gardener in transition.
During an earlier stage in the coaching staff of the Dodgers, Woodward, the former Texas Rangers who rejoined the Dodgers coaching staff after the previous first -base coach of Los Angeles, Clayton McCulloughbecame the coach of the Miami Marlins in the low season, implemented the same style with Corey Seager, whom he considered himself too high to remain campocorto.
“He does not like the style of the old, right-left school, two hands, make sure you get in front of the ball,” Woodward said about Betts. “It makes no sense to him. And I do not train that way. I want them to be athletic, that they are the best possible athletes, so that they can use the lower part of the body, use the legs, take the right direction through baseball until The first base. And that is what Mookie is really good. “
The Dodgers stadium suffered an important renewal of its space in the clubhouse during the low season, which caused the field to be unusable and turned Montero and Betts into nomads. From the second week of November to the first of February, the two trained at the Crespi Carmelite Institute, near Betts’s house in Encino (California), then in Sierra Canyon, at Los Angeles Valley College and, finally, in the Loyola High
For a few days around the New Year, Betts flew to Austin, Texas, to receive the guardianship of Troy Tulowitzkifive times All-Star and twice winner of the Golden Glove Prize, whose mechanics attracted Betts. At the beginning of January, when forest fires extended through the Los Angeles area, Betts flew to Glendale, Arizona, to train with Woodward in person.
However, most of the time, Montero was the eyes and ears on the ground and Woodward the distance advisor. His sessions normally lasted about two hours in the morning, evolving from three days a week to five and continuously increasing in intensity. The objective of the first two months was to improve the necessary feet skills to make a variety of different pitches, but also give Betts many repetitions of each low imaginable ball.
When January arrived, Betts began to elaborate a detailed and efficient routine that would avoid working in excess when the games began. It took into account all situations, included support scenarios for uncontrollable events (when it rained, when there was not enough time, when the batting practice prior to the game was extended too much) and was designed to help Betts endure. What were previously hundreds of shot was reduced to about 35, but everything was taken into account.
LAST YEARBetts launches were especially difficult to catch for Freddie Freeman on the first base, often. But when Freeman joined Betts in spring training, he noticed clear releases that constantly arrived back and almost always reached the designated goal. Betts was doing a better job when putting his legs under him on the batted balls that arrived in many directions. In addition, said Rojas, “he found his place.”
“Technically, talking about playing campocorto, finding your position is very important because you throw the ball from a different position to when you spend it from the right garden,” Rojas explained. “You are not throwing the ball from very top or from below. So you are finding a space that will work for it. Now you understand that you need a space to throw the ball at first base, you need a space to throw the ball on the second base, You need a space to throw the ball at home and from the side. “
The Dodgers Superutility, Kike Hernández, has noticed a “more loose” Betts in the campocorto this spring. Roberts said that Betts is “two degrees better” than last year, before a sprain on the left wrist placed him on the injured list on June 17 and prematurely ended his first attempt. Before presenting to spring training, Betts described himself as “a completely new person there.”
“But we’ll see,” he added.
The matches will be the real test. At that time, said Woodward, will depend largely on the confidence in the work he has done during the last four months. Betts is famous for being hard with himself, so Woodward has proposed to remind him that, provided that his process is solid, the imperfection is acceptable.
“This is why, Woodward usually tells him. “This is not perfect.”
Dodgers certainly do not need Betts like their campocorto. If it does not work, you can easily return to the second base. Rojas, the excellent defender whose offensive production caused Betts’s return to the right garden last season, can supply him at least part -time. Tommy Edman also, who at this time will probably divide his time between the central garden and the second base, and also could do Hyeseong Kim, the 26 -year -old central box who was signed in South Korea this low season.
But it is clear that Betts wants to give another chance.
As Roberts acknowledged, “I certainly felt that he had pending issues.”
