Some Saturday morning notes after the Dodgers snapped their four-game losing streak to pull back into a first-place tie in the National League West on Friday night.
“Going through this year, looking up and seeing that you’re nowhere near on track for your goals, it’s disheartening. It really sucks,” Betts said on the podcast. “Especially when your whole career you’ve gotten pretty close to your goals, sometimes you’ve exceeded your goals.
“It really has taken me just to try to win today, do whatever you can to win today. You may be 0-for-4, but maybe you had a sac fly for an RBI, that helps. Maybe you made a nice play on defense. Since I’ve changed my mindset to that, it really has helped me get through every single day.”
Betts was hitless on Friday, snapping an eight-game hit streak during which he hit .400/.447/.543. But he did have the sacrifice fly he talked about hypothetically in his interview with Yahoo, which drove in the go-ahead run for the Dodgers.
“You kind of take it week to week and see when he can start baseball activities again to get him back,” manager Dave Roberts said of Muncy’s injury, per Bill Plunkett of the Orange County Register. “I don’t think anyone expects it to be season-ending, but hopefully it’s sooner than later.”
Rookie reliever Jack Dreyer, with his sub-3.00 ERA and second-most innings in the Dodgers bullpen, was already known for his affinity for and ability to solve Rubik’s Cubes. He also created a crossword puzzle this season to help kill time among teammates in the Dodgers clubhouse.
“I was like, ‘I’m here in this hotel by myself all day. I need to kill some time,’” Dreyer told Sonja Chen of MLB.com. “‘I’m gonna try to make one.’”
Dreyer got the final out on Friday to earn his second save of the season.