Mookie Betts delivers ‘for the boys’ in Dodgers’ sweep of Padres

It was a sight that’s been all too rare this season, coming precisely when the Dodgers needed it most.

Mookie Betts, bat in hand, game on the line. A swing as smooth as it was strong, his two-handed finish sending the ball out of sight.

For so much of this year, the Dodgers have been picking Betts up amid a career-worst season at the plate.

On Sunday afternoon, with a rivalry game and division lead hanging in the balance, he returned the favor with his biggest moment in what felt like ages.

After once leading by four, then watching the San Diego Padres claw back to tie the score, the Dodgers completed a weekend series sweep on Betts’ go-ahead home run in the eighth.

The no-doubt, 394-foot, stadium-shaking blast sent the Dodgers to a 5-4 win and gave them a two-game lead in the National League West; and had Betts skipping around the bases with a swagger that has been missing for much of the campaign.

“It’s been a long time,” Betts said — since he had delivered such a clutch hit, looked so much like his old self at the dish, and trusted a swing that has frustrated him since the earliest days of the season.

“Finally, I did something good for the boys that’s with the bat. I feel like I’ve done a decent job with the glove. But the bat, I haven’t really been able to help much. So just good to help with that.”

As Betts came to the plate in the eighth, Dodger Stadium stood still in a silent, tense trance.

In the first inning, the team had ambushed Padres starter Yu Darvish for four runs on long balls from Freddie Freeman and Andy Pages.

But from there, a crowd of 49,189 watched the Padres slowly come back.

Tyler Glasnow fizzled after two electric opening innings, leaving the game at the end of the fifth after allowing two runs.

A patchwork Dodgers bullpen couldn’t hold off the Padres, giving up runs in the top of the sixth and eighth to make it a 4-4 game.

At that point, San Diego had the advantage. Their league-best bullpen was fresh. Their closer, Robert Suarez, was on the mound. And the Dodgers were almost completely out of pitching options, having burned five relievers to get the previous nine outs.

But then, Betts delivered. In a 2-and-0 count against Suarez, he launched a center-cut fastball deep into the left-field stands.

“To get into a good count and turn that fastball around, that’s the Mookie we like,” manager Dave Roberts said.

“He was able to stay through it, back-spin the ball, hit it over the fence in a big situation,” Freeman echoed. “Been saying it the last few weeks. Mookie Betts is gonna be Mookie Betts. No one here is worried about him.”

That might have been true of his teammates. But for much of the summer, Betts seemed to be battling constant self-doubt.

His swing never felt right, off from the start after a late-spring stomach virus that zapped him of almost 20 pounds. His typical production never materialized, with a lack of power or consistent on-base ability contributing to distant career-lows in batting average (.242), OPS (.683) and home runs (he is on pace for only 17).

“I don’t know how to get through this,” Betts said last month. “I’m working every day. Hopefully it turns.”

When mechanical tweaks and long-trusted swing cues didn’t fix the issue, Betts recently decided to adopt a new mindset.

At the behest of Roberts, and the encouragement of his wife Brianna, Betts began this month by reframing his perspective.

“We’re going to have to chalk [this] up [as] not a great season,” Betts said two weeks ago, at least as far as his overall numbers were concerned. “But I can go out and help the boys win every night. Get an RBI. Make a play. Do something. I’m going to have to shift my focus there.”

Of late, the shift seemed to be working.

From Aug. 5-13, he went 14 for 35 over an eight-game hitting streak with seven RBIs, three extra-base hits and only two strikeouts.

This weekend had been more of a struggle, with Betts going hitless in his first nine at-bats.

But when he came up in the eighth, he had mental clarity. He wasn’t worried about his numbers, or a statline long past saving.

“Just trying to do something productive,” he said. “It definitely helps to not carry burdens from previous at-bats.”

As the ball sailed out, landing in a left-field pavilion of rollicking fans, Betts practically floated around the bases, giving a two-handed wave to the bullpen, the team’s Shohei Ohtani-inspired finger swoosh to the dugout, and a couple emphatic salutes to both teammates and the crowd.

“To take the pressure off — trying to recover from the season and get more micro, just game to game, at-bat to at-bat — it’s a better quality of life,” Roberts said. “Certainly, we’re seeing the performance from Mookie.”

And as a result, the Dodgers (71-53) had a triumphant ending to their pivotal rivalry series sweep of the Padres (69-55), going from second place Friday to all alone in first again.

“We just played a good brand of baseball this weekend,” Betts said. “But again, we still got a long way to go.”

Long before the dramatic ending, Sunday had started like the previous two games. The Dodgers were getting good pitching, with Glasnow striking out four of his first five batters while pumping increased fastball velocity and generating foolish swings with his slider. The Padres were making mistakes; most notably, Freddy Fermín getting gunned down by Pages from center while trying to leg out a double in the top of the third, turning what could have been a crooked-number rally into only a one-run inning.

Darvish, meanwhile, made a pair of two-strike mistakes in the first, leaving a fastball up to Freeman for a three-run homer before failing to bury a splitter to Pages for a solo shot.

It all seemed to give the Dodgers full control of the series finale.

In the top of the fifth, however, things began to shift.

First, Ramón Laureano lifted a solo drive just over the wall in right to lead off the inning. And though Glasnow got out of a jam later in the inning, his fading command and rising 91-throw pitch count prompted Roberts to go to the bullpen with still 12 outs to go.

In the sixth, Anthony Banda gave up one run on a pair of doubles (the second one, a floating fly ball into the right-field corner from Ryan O’Hearn that slow-footed Teoscar Hernández couldn’t track down).

And though Blake Treinen stranded a runner at third in the seventh — thanks in no small part to a generous strike call against Manny Machado that negated a walk — more trouble arose in the eighth, after Alexis Díaz started by hitting a batter and giving up a double to Laureano on a line drive to center.

“Man, fought our tail off to come back,” Padres manager Mike Shildt said. “Could have easily said, you know what, it’s not our day again, down four.”

Tying the game, however, was as close as the Padres would get.

Facing the two-on, one-out jam, Roberts summoned Alex Vesia to try and get out of the inning. The left-hander retired both batters he faced, with only a ground ball from Jose Iglesias managing to level the score.

When Vesia returned to the dugout, Roberts phoned to the bullpen, instructing Justin Wrobleski to get loose with the game veering toward extras.

Vesia, however, had a different plan in mind.

“They told me I was done. And I was just like, ‘No,’” Vesia declared. “So I told Doc, I walked up to him and said, ‘Hey, if we’re up [in the ninth], I want it.’ He was like, ‘OK, you got it.’ Sure enough, Mook, bang, homers. Sweet, let’s go.”

Indeed, just when it seemed like all the momentum the Dodgers had built this weekend was suddenly fading, and the series would end with them only tied atop the standings, Betts instead flipped the script with his moment of salvation. Then Vesia returned to the mound for a clean ninth inning — punctuated by a strikeout of Machado that left him one for 11 in the series.

“To really weather the last couple innings, and to get that big hit off a really good closer was big,” Roberts said. “Yeah, feel a lot better today than a week ago.”