Dave Roberts gives Mookie Betts a day off as his

It took just one sport popping out of the All-Star break for Dave Roberts to know Mookie Betts still wasn’t proper.

Every week in the past, Roberts was hopeful that Betts — coming off his first missed All-Star Game in a decade — would return from the break refocused and rejuvenated; prepared to snap out of a career-worst begin to his season and rediscover a swing that has eluded him for a lot of the marketing campaign.

Instead, in the Dodgers’ second-half opener Friday night time, Betts went 0 for 4 with two strikeouts. His batting average dipped to .241 (more than 20 factors worse than he has ever posted in a full season) while his OPS fell to .688 (the worst it has been all yr). And, as has been the case for most of the summer time, his indicators of frustration have been abundantly clear, with the 32-year-old wanting misplaced at the plate.

Thus, when Roberts set his workforce’s lineup for Saturday, the supervisor made a shock resolution to go away Betts out of it, giving his celebrity shortstop an unplanned day off after calling Betts on Saturday morning to talk about the state of his sport.

“Talking to him, seeing where his head is at, seeing where he’s at mechanically, I just thought tonight was a night where I felt he needed to be down,” Roberts mentioned hours later, forward of the Dodgers’ sport against the Milwaukee Brewers.

“He was more than willing and wanted to be out there. But for me, I wanted to take it out of his hands [so he could] have a day. I’ve talked about this before, just having players watch a baseball game. And I understand we just had four days off at the break. But still showing up at the ballpark, and not participating, watching, that’s a different mindset, psyche than being at home. So for him to come here, show up, not play, know he’s not going to play, I feel good about the work he’s going to put in today. Also, I think, for the mind it will be beneficial.”

Betts didn’t speak to reporters Saturday, but did go through his regular set of pregame infield drills at shortstop — additional confirming that, certainly, his absence from the lineup had nothing to do with any type of injury-related problem.

While Roberts mentioned his “expectation” is that Betts might be back in motion Sunday, he left the door open to giving Betts one other day off for the sequence finale.

“It’s going to be a day-to-day thing,” Roberts mentioned. “It’s going to be my decision on how I feel he is mentally to take on that night’s starter.”

There was no particular second from Friday’s sport that satisfied Roberts such a break was warranted. Instead, it was the actual fact that so little had seemingly modified from where Betts was before the All-Star break, when he reached the halfway mark in a three-for-24 hunch and batting just .185 over his earlier 31 video games.

“He’s not used to struggling like this,” Roberts mentioned of Betts, who also has only 11 home runs and a .377 slugging proportion. “There’s a part of it where you feel like you’re letting people down, letting the team down. That weight that is just natural for him to carry is there. That’s a little bit from last night, just seeing him.”

Betts has struggled to determine the trigger of his decline — one so stark, he has a below-league-average mark of 95 in the all-encompassing OPS+ metric (successfully that means he has been 5% much less productive than a league average hitter).

In an interview before Friday’s sport, he mentioned he has cycled through varied “feels” with his swing in hopes of getting his mechanics realigned. Hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc pointed to inefficiencies in the best way Betts “loads” his arms and arms, which he believes have impacted the slugger’s bat path and swing sequence.

“There’s no exact [fix], where you can do this, this and this,” Van Scoyoc mentioned, “because he has to find something for him that works organically that gets him lined up.”

To that finish, Roberts’ hope is that Saturday’s day off will help.

That it comes just two days into the second half alerts how pressing Betts’ struggles have grow to be.

“He understood,” Roberts mentioned. “He’s a guy that wants to be out there every single day. But I think he understood that it was my decision and I think it’s best for him, I think it’s best for our ball club. He’ll be ready when called upon.”