LOS ANGELES — Maybe it was the humidity, but Mookie Betts sounded like a beaten man at the end of the Dodgers’ three-game series in Tampa last weekend.
“I’m out of answers,” Betts said when questioned – again – about the worst offensive season of his career. “I’ve done everything I can possibly do. It’s up to God at this point.”
Divine intervention or not, Betts has come in out of the wilderness. Since snapping a career-worst 0-for-22 stretch on Tuesday, he has gone 6 for 11, including his first home run since July 5.
That homer, a two-run drive off of Max Scherzer in the fifth inning on Friday, was the decisive blow in a Hall of Fame matchup between Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw, sending the Dodgers on their way to a 5-1 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays on Friday night.
“A lot more confident now. We’ll see how tomorrow goes,” Betts said. “I enjoyed today, but got to turn the page.”
Unwilling to make any declarations about turning his season around, Betts instead declared his season individually irredeemable.
“This season’s over. My season’s kind of over,” he said after one of his better games in that season. “We’re going to have to chalk that up as not a great season. But I can go out and help the boys win every night, do something, get an RBI, make a play, do something that I’m going to have to shift my focus there.
“Obviously everyone wants to have great seasons, but it’s a lot easier when you just don’t worry about the season. You just worry about game to game. I’ll take this perspective for the rest of my career, for sure.”
Kershaw and Scherzer led everyone in perspective on Friday night. No longer the hard-throwing young pups who stepped in for another pair of future Hall of Famers (Randy Johnson and Greg Maddux) and squared off for the first time in September 2008, the greybeard versions of Kershaw and Scherzer went a very similar six innings in their fifth career matchup.
“It’s not lost on me,” Kershaw said of the significance of the matchup between the two 3,000-strikeout members with three Cy Young Awards each. “I think it’s really cool that Scherz was the guy right before me to get to 3,000. I got to play with him, I got to compete against him, basically, our whole careers.
“I think it is really cool that we got to do this in our first year, and I don’t know if it’s our last year, but toward the end, for sure.”
Kershaw gave up seven hits, walked one and struck out four. Four years older than the 37-year-old Kershaw, Scherzer gave up six hits, walked three and struck out five.
“You go back to that game, we’re competing all the way back then,” Scherzer said. “It’s kind of a cool little milestone moment here where we’re hooking it back up against each other, squaring off against each other again. He’s an awesome teammate as well. I got all the respect in the world for what he does on and off the field.”
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts smiled when asked after the game if he was surprised to see the 41-year-old Scherzer firing 96-mph fastballs at the Dodgers.
“I think that had a little bit of adrenaline,” Roberts said. “There was a little bit more in the tank tonight.”
It took a moment for him to access that reservoir.
Back-to-back singles by Shohei Ohtani (his first of three hits in the game) and Betts and a two-out walk loaded the bases in the first inning. But Teoscar Hernandez swung and missed at two fastballs down the middle, fouled off one slider then chased another one into the dirt of the left-hand batter’s box. Scherzer was off the hook and retired the next eight batters in order.
Kershaw, meanwhile, found himself in trouble in the second inning when Bo Bichette dribbled a 56.3 mph ground ball down the first-base line. Freddie Freeman moved to his left, but the ball went under his reach and into right field for a double.
Three consecutive singles drove in a run and loaded the bases with one out for Myles Straw. Betts got Kershaw out of trouble with a diving catch of Straw’s liner and a quick throw to second for an inning-ending double play.
“I thought that double play from Mookie was huge,” Roberts said. “I thought that kind of flipped the game as far as the momentum.”
“It was a line drive kind of right at me,” Betts demurred. “So sure, it’s nice. But if I’m not making that play we’re in a little bit of trouble.”
It was one of three double plays started by Betts on Friday. But it wasn’t his biggest moment of the night.
That came in the fifth inning, after Andy Pages seemed to derail a scoring opportunity with bad baserunning.
After drawing a leadoff walk from Scherzer, Pages took off on a pitch that Alex Freeland popped into foul territory. First baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. came in to make the catch but Pages was still near second base, apparently unaware the ball had been caught. He couldn’t get back to first in time, the double play clearing the bases for Ohtani.
“It was a straight steal. I thought he had a good jump,” Roberts said. “Alex puts the ball in play, a pop-up. You’ve got to know where the ball is at. He didn’t peek in. He didn’t pick up the third base coach and he got doubled off.
“Andy has grown a lot as a ballplayer. But those are things that we’ve got to continue to tighten up and get better at.”
Ohtani doubled to the wall in right-center field, a hit that almost certainly would have scored Pages. Then Betts got a hanging slider from Scherzer and drove it into the left field pavilion.
“It was a pitch out over the plate so I had to put a good swing on it and I did,” Betts said.
That one-run lead swelled by three in a seventh inning that featured just one hit – an Ohtani single off of Guerrero’s glove – three walks (including one with the bases loaded), a sacrifice fly and a run-scoring fielder’s choice on a Betts grounder with the bases loaded.
That was Betts’ third RBI of the game. He had a total of three runs driven in over his previous 19 games.