Some Major League Baseball players are creatures of habit. They’re focused on repetition and staying committed to their approach, even when things aren’t going their way.
Mookie Betts is not one of those players.
Instead, the Boston Red Sox right fielder is open to making adjustments, however slight, if they give him a great chance to succeed in a given game.
“You try and be the same every day,” Betts said this week, according to NBC Sports Boston’s Evan Drellich. “But nobody wakes up and does the same thing every day. So, you have a little tweak here and there, and if you’re just not doing something today — it’s kind of like golf. You know, you hit a slice, you’re slicing the ball today. Just for that day, play the slice. Then, the next day may change.”
It’s interesting to hear such a mindset from a big league hitter, especially one as accomplished as Betts, who slugged another home run Thursday night against the Los Angeles Angels and enters Friday hitting .391 with six homers, 14 RBIs and a 1.277 OPS.
But that doesn’t mean Betts is just winging it up there. The 25-year-old simply bases his tweaks more on how he feels — not necessarily what he’s seeing in the video room — and it obviously has worked to this point in his career.
“Always a feel for me,” Betts said, per Drellich. “I can look at it and mimic something, but if it doesn’t feel right, then I kind of don’t trust it.”
Sometimes, you just need to play the slice.
