Mookie Betts on former Red Sox manager: ‘I still talk to him once a month’
LOS ANGELES — Mookie Betts is a long way removed from his time with the Red Sox. The 2018 World Series champion is now in his seventh season with the Los Angeles Dodgers — more seasons than he spent in the big leagues with the Red Sox — and over that time he’s won three more rings in his new city to go along with the one he earned in Boston.
Over that time, the Red Sox have experienced a lot of turnover, and at this point there’s nobody left on the roster or coaching staff who were with the big league club in 2019, Betts’ last season in Boston.
The last and most significant remaining link was severed in April when the Red Sox fired former manager Alex Cora, who Betts said he’s still close with even after all these years.
“He was awesome with me, I still talk to him at least once a month now, if not more,” Betts told the Herald in the Dodger Stadium home clubhouse on Saturday. “I wasn’t there so I don’t know what went down, from my viewpoint it’s just a different Red Sox that I remember when I was being there.”
Betts has changed a lot since leaving Boston, too. Besides the championships, the accolades and his foray into podcasting and content creation, Betts has continued to evolve as a player as he enters the back half of his MLB career.
For one thing, Betts no longer plays right field. After starring at the position over the first decade of his career and winning six Gold Gloves at the position, Betts transitioned to the infield during the 2024 season and has spent the past two seasons as Los Angeles’ starting shortstop.
Doing so helped the Dodgers fill a significant void at shortstop after injuries and underperformance by others left a gaping hole on the otherwise loaded roster. And Betts performed well enough last season that he finished as a Gold Glove finalist.
Is he enjoying the change?
“Absolutely,” said the 33-year-old Betts. “It’s keeping me young, keeping me athletic.”
Though the position switch has been a success, the past two seasons have still been a struggle in other respects.
Following a 10-year stretch where Betts annually ranked among the most productive players in MLB, last season Betts saw his offensive production noticeably dip. He still hit .258 with 20 home runs and 87 RBI, numbers most players would kill to have, but his .732 OPS was nearly 150 points lower than his career average.
This year he’s taken another step back, batting .232 with 13 home runs, 36 RBI and a .695 OPS. He also missed about a month with a strained oblique in April, and try as he might, Betts said he still hasn’t figured out how to turn things around.
“Honestly I don’t really know man, I’ve tried to figure out what it was that got me here, but I haven’t really come up with an answer,” Betts said. “It’s tough sometimes, especially when you know the kind of player you believe you are, but I got the guys here, they keep me going, they play well, and at the end of the day it’s just about winning. Of course stats on the back of the baseball card look cool and all those types of things, and I want them to be good, for sure, but as long as we win and everybody is happy then it’ll be alright.”
The Dodgers have done plenty of winning. Over the past two seasons Betts and his teammates became MLB’s first back-to-back champion since the New York Yankees won three straight titles from 1998 to 2000. Betts himself is the only active four-time World Series champion, and according to MLB.com, he’s one of only four players since the divisional era began in 1969 to win four titles while never playing for the Yankees.
Los Angeles remains the odds-on favorite to win again this year, and their chances got a lot better late Saturday night when the club landed two-time Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal in a blockbuster trade.
“It’s fun, it’s a blessing,” Betts said. “Not everyone gets to say they can play in a World Series every year, there are only a few teams that can and being one of them, it makes it enjoyable coming to work every day.”
Betts acknowledged that he’s likely closer to the end of his MLB career than to the beginning of it. He said he’s proud to have made it 13 seasons in the majors and counting, and if you’d told him back at the outset he’d accomplish that he would’ve been happy.
That being said he still has things he’d like to accomplish, and with several of his teammates likely to sail into the Baseball Hall of Fame someday, Betts acknowledged that he hopes to earn a spot in Cooperstown himself.
“That’s a goal,” Betts said. “I definitely want to have a Hall of Fame speech, I need to get going and figure some things out to achieve that goal.”