If the Red Sox needed another reason to regret trading Mookie Betts, they just got one.
Their erstwhile homegrown star, already a six-time Gold Glove winner in the first ten years of his Major League career, is shifting to the Dodgers’ infield.
“It’s pretty safe to say that Mookie Betts is going to be our everyday second baseman,” Los Angeles manager (and 2004 Red Sox hero) Dave Roberts told High Heat’s Alanna Rizzo.
Boston drafted Betts as a second baseman in 2011, and he played 230 minor league games at the position. It was largely due to Dustin Pedroia’s Gold Glove grasp that, as a top prospect, he first shifted to the outfield before his Major League debut in June 2014. He played centerfield and shortstop in high school, but Xander Bogaerts had debuted the previous summer, and locked down the latter.
“I think it’s going to be fun, if they do move me,” Betts told the Herald at the time. “I enjoy learning new things.”
After making 14 appearances at second and 28 in center in his debut season, Betts spent all of 2015 in the outfield, 133 in center, 11 in right. He wouldn’t make another appearance in center (or the infield) until the 18′ season, in large part because in ’16, Jackie Bradley Jr. emerged as an elite CF defender. He wouldn’t start at second again until September 2020, his first season with the Dodgers.
No problem. Betts, an athletic jack-of-all-trades who moonlights as an elite bowler, became the everyday right-fielder. Starting in 2016, he won five consecutive RF Gold Gloves with Boston and LA; he’s now up to six in 10 big-league seasons.
According to Betts, it’s a relocation years in the making. Or rather, a homecoming. Over the years, he kept up a pre-game routine of taking ground-balls at short and second, just in case. Last March, he confirmed that he’d been willing to switch position so that the Dodgers could sign Aaron Judge.
“I’ve been having that conversation for probably the last three or four years,” he told MLB Network Radio. “It’s just my desire to get back in the infield, because that’s my home… You only play the game for so long, and I would like to get back to my roots before it’s all said and done.”
To date, Betts has started 1,128 regular-season games (1,028 complete games) and played 9,997 ⅓ innings in the outfield. He’s only made 212 starts (188 CG) totaling 713 innings at second, racking up the majority of them in 2023. After no more than seven games and 46 innings there in each of his first three seasons in Los Angeles, he played a career-high 70 games (62 starts) and regular-season 485 innings this year, including in his first series back at Fenway Park in August. He also started all three NLDS games at second, his first time at the position in the postseason, but the Arizona Diamondbacks swept the Dodgers.
Meanwhile, the position continues to be a black hole for the Red Sox, who haven’t had a steady second since Pedroia, whose last full season was already over half a decade ago. This year, Boston used 12 different players at second – six of whom contributed double-digit contests – and at least ten players there in each of the previous two seasons as well. Christian Arroyo, led the pack with 62, but was designated for assignment by early August and finished out the season in Triple-A. The roster’s depth chart currently lists Pablo Reyes and rookies Enmanuel Valdez and Ceddanne Rafaela as the second base options.
“I’ve never considered myself a right fielder,” Betts told the Los Angeles Times in July. “I just play right field. I’ve always considered myself a middle infielder.”
Who will complete the Red Sox middle infield remains to be seen, but it’s unlikely to be anyone as talented as Betts.