LOS ANGELES -- After enduring a sluggish start to his sophomore season, Andy Pages is rewarding the Dodgers' faith in him.
Pages had a four-hit, four-RBI day -- both career highs -- in Sunday's 9-2 win over the Pirates to lock down an even more impressive feat: a combined 10 hits across the three-game set at Dodger Stadium. Four of those hits went for extra bases, three doubles in the first two games and a homer in the finale.
Pages became the first Dodger since Freddie Freeman in 2023, and the 13th in franchise history dating back to 1901, to record at least 10 hits across a three-game series. The most recent Major Leaguer to do that was Luis Arraez last May.
"Sometimes, guys get in a tree, and he's in a tree right now, and he had really good swings," Pirates manager Derek Shelton said. "But it's one of those things where everything we threw at him, he hit."
Dating back to last Tuesday against the Cubs, Pages has hit safely in five straight games, with multiple hits in four of them. But the 24-year-old began picking things up at the plate even before then: Since April 15, Pages has gone 16-for-32 with a 1.404 OPS in his past nine games. His OPS has soared from .529 before that span to a healthy .861.
Only Shohei Ohtani (.908) and Teoscar Hern¨¢ndez (.869) rank above Pages in that regard on the Dodgers.
"From the start, I've been feeling good," Pages said in Spanish. "But now I've been hitting the ball where there aren't people, so now it's turning out better."
Pages had scuffled badly to open the season, a stretch that was around its worst midway through the Dodgers' first domestic road trip through Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. He wasn't hitting, and he was making mental mistakes on the bases and in the field.
Manager Dave Roberts gave him a day off in Washington, and Pages responded by homering in consecutive games once he was back in the lineup. That didn't turn into a hot streak, but from that point on, Pages began looking more competitive at the plate.
Pages has said that hitting lower in the order has been an adjustment for him. While he was struggling at the plate, he found himself overthinking about his role, whereas now, he's tried to focus more on playing to his strengths.
"I've never hit in that spot in the order," Pages said. "At first I was more passive, trying to see as many pitches as possible. ¡ In my career, that's never helped me because I get too passive. The pitches in the zone, I need to hit."
Before the game, Roberts described Pages' transformation as "one thousand percent" more mental, rather than mechanical. That is not unusual for young players striving to meet high expectations.
"It can be tough," said Hern¨¢ndez, who hit his 200th career homer on Sunday and has been a mentor to Pages. "I went through that, and it was not fun. But at the same time, you have to go through that to get to the good moments, the moments that he's going through right now."