Dodgers Andy Pages tries to avoid sophomore | College News

WASHINGTON — Andy Pages shook his head with a grin, raised his clasped fingers to the sky, then gave thanks with a much-needed sigh of reduction.

It didn’t matter that the Dodgers had been getting blown out on Tuesday evening. Or that his fifth-inning home run did little to halt the crew’s surprising skid on this week’s highway journey.

For one second, for one at-bat, the second-year slugger had lastly skilled a second of reassurance, hitting a two-strike slider past the attain of two leaping Washington Nationals outfielders for his first long ball of the season.

“It was definitely a sense of relief,” Pages mentioned in Spanish by way of a crew interpreter after the sport. “Just like a big, major breath of fresh air, for sure.”

Up to that time, the 2025 season had begun ominously for the 24-year-old heart fielder. He was 4 for 35 on the plate. He had made a number of mental errors on protection and the bottom paths. And he’d grown more and more burdened by the precariousness of his scenario, inching ever nearer to a James Outman-esque trajectory of regressing from a productive rookie season to a disheartening sophomore marketing campaign.

Pages didn’t show these simmering feelings as he left the batter’s box Tuesday. He stored his head down and face straight as he trotted across the bases.

But back within the dugout, the as soon as highly-touted prospect lastly let himself really feel some self-satisfaction. For weeks, strain had been building round him. This was a sudden release.

“It gave me a lot more confidence,” Pages reiterated. “To get some results … was a major lift off my back.”

Despite batting .248 with 13 home runs and 46 RBIs final season — a promising, if inconsistent, rookie efficiency punctuated by a two-home run, four-RBI efficiency in Game 5 of the National League Championship Series — Pages knew he’d have few certainties with this yr’s title-defending crew.

From the start of spring coaching, he mentioned, “the team told me that I didn’t have a guaranteed spot, that I had to work my way to get a big-league spot.”

Although Pages broke camp because the membership’s main heart fielder, his early-season struggles had been weighing on him.

“That’s added a little bit of stress to my day-to-day,” he acknowledged. “I feel good. It’s just some of the things that I’ve been working through haven’t worked out.”

Blunders within the outfield (the place he has misplayed a number of fly balls, together with a rocket from Philadelphia Phillies star Bryce Harper final weekend) and on the bases (the place he has run by way of stop indicators and been caught twice on over-aggressive base-running selections) had been probably the most evident moments of failure over the season’s first two weeks.

“Some plays that I just need to make,” Pages mentioned, “I haven’t made them.”

At the basis of his frustrations, nevertheless, has been his early incapacity to constantly produce on the plate — the place, even after accumulating 4 hits and two home runs in his final three video games, he’s batting simply .171 with a .648 OPS.

After all, the principle motive Pages is on the big-league roster over different triple-A choices resembling utilityman Hyeseong Kim (the slick-fielding offseason signing from South Korea who opened the yr within the minors to work on revamping his swing) and outfielder Esteury Ruiz (the 2023 American League stolen base chief the Dodgers acquired from the Oakland A’s final week) is as a result of of his bat.

Thus, even over an exceedingly small pattern dimension getting into this week’s sequence in Washington, his lagging total numbers had turn out to be trigger for concern.

“I’m trying to do the things that I can do every day, to work hard, to get better at the plate, making adjustments,” Pages mentioned on Monday, when supervisor Dave Roberts stored him out of the lineup to let him reset mentally.

“I’ve been doing a lot of good things,” he insisted. “But balls aren’t falling.”

To Roberts, Pages’ stoop had much less to do with swing mechanics, and more with “passivity” in his offensive method.

An aggressive hitter ordinarily, Pages had appeared too cautious within the box within the early going this yr. Batting close to the underside of the Dodgers lineup — usually, within the No. 9 gap with Shohei Ohtani behind him within the leadoff spot — he began taking more pitches than common, and shortening his swing to go the opposite method.

It has helped Pages stroll more, drawing free passes at double the speed he did final yr. But the pop in his bat had gone lacking. Routine fly outs to proper area had been an overly common prevalence.

“Just to be a little bit more aggressive, shifting the field a little bit more towards the center, the big part of the field, I think would be more beneficial,” Roberts mentioned.

Tuesday’s home run, hit on an arching line to the left-center-field bullpen, served as a long-awaited first instance.

Another got here on Wednesday afternoon, in two starkly contrasting mid-game at-bats.

In the fourth inning of the Dodgers’ sequence finale towards the Nationals, Pages took three consecutive thigh-high, center-cut sinkers from right-hander Jake Irvin, kicking himself after going down trying with Ohtani looming on deck.

“I’m not used to hitting in that part of the order, and I’m trying to see as many pitches as I can,” Pages mentioned, concurring with Roberts’ evaluation of his overly conservative early-season method. “Sometimes I get too passive for that reason, which isn’t good for me.”

Thus, his subsequent time up within the prime of the seventh, Pages swung at three straight sliders from reliever Eduardo Salazar. The first two, he whiffed on. But the third, which was left up within the zone and out over the plate, he launched to the left area seats for a game-tying blast — his second home run in a 24-hour span.

“I just tell him to go aggressive,” mentioned veteran teammate Teoscar Hernández, who has turn out to be a close mentor of Pages’ since early final season. “He’s an aggressive hitter. So just get ready to hit.”

Roberts agreed, noting Pages continues to be “calibrating” the best steadiness of endurance and aggression.

“He needs to kind of figure out where his strengths are in the hitting zone,” Roberts added, “and if he sees it there, then just be as aggressive as you need to be.”

It’s all half of the persevering with training for Pages; the sort of growing pains the Dodgers are keen to tolerate, for now, in hopes he can blossom into a more constant offensive power as an on a regular basis big-league participant.

There are nonetheless defensive fundamentals to drill home, and baserunning errors to remove.

There are nonetheless alternate options down the depth chart, too, if Pages can’t flip this week’s two-homer outburst into a more extended period of success.

But, “for him to start getting results is good,” mentioned one other veteran teammate, Kiké Hernández. “I know what it is to be young and struggling in the big leagues. There’s people behind you trying to take your job. I know how that feels. But once you start getting a little more calm and loose — that’s what it seems like with his at-bats right now. He’s starting to get in a rhythm.”

Added Teoscar Hernández, with a broad smile after Pages’ home run on Wednesday helped lead the Dodgers to a come-from-behind win: “He’s gonna hit. He’s a good hitter. He’s gonna be fine. And he’s gonna help us a lot this year, too.”