LOS ANGELES — Mookie Betts, whose spouse used to be anticipating the couple’s 2nd kid, used to be positioned at the paternity listing Tuesday however is predicted to be again within the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ lineup for Wednesday’s sequence finale towards the New York Mets.
When he does, he may just go back as a part-time, fill-in shortstop.
“We’ll see,” Dodgers supervisor Dave Roberts mentioned with a smirk previous to Tuesday’s recreation. “We’ll see.”
Chris Taylor suffered an shock to his left facet Monday, and Gavin Lux has been misplaced for the time to a torn ACL, retirement Miguel Rojas, who’s slashing .129/.182/.161 thru his first 10 video games, as the one shortstop at the roster. Taylor went thru some agility paintings Tuesday and has no longer been positioned at the injured listing; the inadequency of a roster spot has triggered the speculation of Betts spending at some time at shortstop, a place he hasn’t performed since his minor league season of 2012.
Roberts mentioned Betts nevertheless takes garden balls on the place each day and has been “clamoring for quite some time” to attract a get started there. Roberts doesn’t imagine there could be any particular condition dangers concerned with briefly foundation Betts at shortstop. Betts got here up as a 2nd baseman and has inspired defensively era drawing 15 begins on the place since becoming a member of the Dodgers in 2020. Shortstop, after all, is a special animal, however Roberts mentioned Betts “looks extremely natural there.”
As for what it will say about how shorthanded the Dodgers are at this kind of important place?
“I think that’s just a byproduct of what happened yesterday with CT,” Roberts mentioned. “I think when you’re talking about a third string at any position, there’s some things that have to happen that you just kind of have to get through. Hopefully CT’s thing is minimal and we don’t have that conversation, but I just don’t know. But to have Mookie as your third string at anything — I think teams can be doing a lot worse.”
