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David Ortiz offers up advice to Mookie Betts amid World Series slump
"At the end of the day that’s what the game is all about: Having fun.”
Mookie Betts has picked a bad time to be mired in a brutal slump.
As the Los Angeles Dodgers face elimination entering Game 6 of the World Series against the Blue Jays on Friday, Betts has gone ice-cold at the plate, batting .130 with three singles, three walks, zero extra-base hits and no RBI so far during the Fall Classic.
It’s been a frustrating season for Betts, with the former Red Sox star sporting a career-low .732 OPS during the regular season before batting just .234 during the postseason. He went 0-4 in Game 5 against Toronto on Wednesday as the Blue Jays took a 3-2 series lead going back to Rogers Centre.
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“I’ve been terrible and I wish it was from lack of effort, I really do,” Betts told reporters after Wednesday’s loss at Dodgers Stadium. “But it’s not, so I don’t have any answers.”
With Betts’ in an extended rut and the Dodgers’ season on the brink of collapse, Betts’ former Red Sox teammate David Ortiz offered up some words of advice during Fox’s World Series coverage.
“If I’m Mookie, I would put that all behind,” Ortiz said on FOX. “You remember when we used to prepare for to go to play a Little League game? You weren’t thinking about a scouting report, you weren’t thinking about what people say, you weren’t thinking about what you did yesterday.
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“When you played in Little League all you wanted to do was see the ball and try to hit it and have fun. At the end of the day that’s what the game is all about: Having fun.”
Betts is far from the only Dodgers star that is struggling at the plate.
During Wednesday’s Game 5 loss, Los Angeles’ top-four hitters in the lineup in Shohei Ohtani, Will Smith, Betts, and Freddie Freeman went 1-for-15 at the plate with eight strikeouts.
Through five games against Toronto, the Dodgers are averaging just 3.6 runs per game — including three total runs in Games 4 and 5 in Los Angeles.
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