Not an MVP nominee, but Betts' value is immeasurable

Mookie Betts isn’t a finalist for the National League MVP Award along with his teammate, Shohei Ohtani, Francisco Lindor of the Mets and Ketel Marte of the D-backs. Betts broke a bone in his left hand this season and only ended up playing 116 games, even if he was right there for the Dodgers as they were winning the World Series, at the plate and in the outfield and even reaching into the right-field stands at Yankee Stadium for a ball a couple of fans famously tried to take away from him.

So he won’t win a second MVP Award to go with the one he won in Boston in 2018. That doesn’t change the fact that at age 32 he continues to be one of the great and versatile and most remarkable players of all time. He plays the outfield when the Dodgers need him to do that, he comes in to play either second base or shortstop, he hits and hits for power and is still a streak of light on the bases.

Now it’s being reported that he may come back in from the outfield – again.

“The beauty of Mookie,” Dodgers general manager Brandon Gomes was quoted as saying the other day, “is that he is one of the most selfless superstars we have ever been around.”

Betts is one of the most selfless superstars anybody has ever been around, in Boston and now with the Dodgers. Other star players have gone to the outfield from the infield in mid-career, most notably Hall of Famer Robin Yount in Milwaukee. No player of Betts’ caliber has ever gone in the other direction, and now might do it again.

He has just won his second World Series as a Dodger. After the first one in 2020, his teammate (then and now), Kiké Hernández was asked what impressed him most about a Dodgers team winning its first Series since 1988.

“It’s how great Mookie Betts is as a player,” Hernández said.

Nothing has changed. Betts is still there when the Dodgers need him, wherever and however they need him. In the clinching Game 6 for them in ‘20, it was Betts who doubled Austin Barnes to third base before Barnes scored the game’s tying run on a wild pitch. Then it was Betts, on a ground ball to the Rays’ Ji-Man Choi at first, flying home from third to score the run that put his team ahead for good. Later, he hit the home run that put the game and the World Series away for good.

So, of course, it was Mookie in the middle of things in Game 5 of this year’s Series at Yankee Stadium when the Dodgers were coming back from being five runs down. It was Mookie flying again on the bases, toward first base this time, after Anthony Rizzo and Gerrit Cole essentially froze. Rizzo expected Cole to cover first. Cole clearly thought Rizzo could take the ball himself. Mookie, though, did what he always does. He ran. And beat the play. The top of the fifth kept going, and before long, the game was 5-5.

And who knocked in what would turn out to be the World Series-winning run in the eighth inning? Betts did with an eighth-inning sacrifice fly to center field. We continue to watch a Hall of Fame career, and that means a first-ballot Hall of Fame career, in real -- and very fast -- time, as Betts goes back and forth between the outfield and the middle infield with ease. Earlier this season, manager Dave Roberts told me, “Watching him play shortstop now, it’s starting to look like his natural position.”

At this point, they all are. It’s reached the point where his natural position is wherever he’s standing. Betts is a nominee for the All-MLB Team despite only playing 116 games. He is a three-time World Series champion now, an eight-time All-Star, a six-time Silver Slugger Award winner, a six-time Gold Glove winner and he won another Fielding Bible Award in 2023 -- this time for playing multiple positions. When he was still with the Red Sox, he became the first player to win an MVP, a Silver Slugger, a Gold Glove, a batting title and a World Series title in the same season. The Red Sox eventually traded him away, the best player they’d voluntarily sent packing since Babe Ruth a hundred years ago. Even in a ’24 regular season shortened by injury, he still hit 19 homers, knocked in 75, scored 75 and batted .289.

Betts, somehow and sometimes, got lost a little bit this season, because of the hand injury, because of what Ohtani did during the regular season and then what Freddie Freeman did in the World Series -- starting with that walk-off grand slam in the 10th inning of Game 1. Maybe it’s just one more amazing thing about Markus Lynn Betts that you could ever lose sight of his skill set, just because he makes it so difficult to take your eyes off what he can do on a baseball field.

He's not an MVP finalist this season because of the obvious skills of the players from his league who are. But he's always one of the most valuable -- and valued -- players in his sport, every single year. We’re right to say there’s nobody like Ohtani. There’s also nobody quite like Mookie Betts.