Mookie Betts delivers for the boys in Dodgers

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

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

For so a lot of this yr, the Dodgers have been selecting Betts up amid a career-worst season at the plate.

On Sunday afternoon, with a rivalry sport and division lead hanging in the stability, he returned the favor with his largest second in what felt like ages.

After once main by 4, then watching the San Diego Padres claw back to tie the rating, the Dodgers accomplished a weekend collection sweep on Betts’ go-ahead home run in the eighth.

The no-doubt, 394-foot, stadium-shaking blast despatched 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 lacking for a lot of the marketing campaign.

“It’s been a long time,” Betts said — since he had delivered such a clutch hit, seemed so very similar to his outdated self at the dish, and trusted a swing that has annoyed him since the earliest days of the season.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 got here to the plate in the eighth, Dodger Stadium stood still in a silent, tense trance.

In the first inning, the group had ambushed Padres starter Yu Darvish for 4 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 sport at the end of the fifth after permitting two runs.

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

At that level, San Diego had the benefit. Their league-best bullpen was recent. Their nearer, Robert Suarez, was on the mound. And the Dodgers had been virtually fully out of pitching choices, having burned 5 relievers to get the earlier 9 outs.

But then, Betts delivered. In a 2-and-0 depend 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,” supervisor 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 need been true of his teammates. But for a lot of the summer season, Betts appeared to be battling fixed self-doubt.

His swing never felt proper, off from the start after a late-spring abdomen virus that zapped him of virtually 20 kilos. His typical manufacturing never materialized, with a lack of energy or constant on-base means contributing to distant career-lows in batting average (.242), OPS (.683) and home runs (he’s on tempo 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 repair the issue, Betts lately determined to undertake a new mindset.

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

“We’re going to have to chalk [this] up [as] not a great season,” Betts said two weeks in the past, at least as far as his total numbers had been involved. “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 appeared 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 wrestle, with Betts going hitless in his first 9 at-bats.

But when he got here up in the eighth, he had mental readability. He wasn’t nervous 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.”

Mookie Betts runs the bases after hitting a solo home run in the eighth inning for the Dodgers against the Padres on Sunday.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

As the ball sailed out, touchdown in a left-field pavilion of rollicking followers, Betts virtually floated around the bases, giving a two-handed wave to the bullpen, the group’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 consequence, the Dodgers (71-53) had a triumphant ending to their pivotal rivalry collection 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 began like the earlier two video games. The Dodgers had been getting good pitching, with Glasnow placing out 4 of his first 5 batters while pumping elevated fastball velocity and producing silly swings with his slider. The Padres had been making errors; most notably, Freddy Fermín getting gunned down by Pages from heart while attempting to leg out a double in the top of the third, turning what might have been a crooked-number rally into only a one-run inning.

Darvish, meanwhile, made a pair of two-strike errors 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 appeared to give the Dodgers full control of the collection finale.

In the top of the fifth, however, issues started to shift.

Dodgers beginning pitcher Tyler Glasnow delivers in the first inning against the Padres on Sunday.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

First, Ramón Laureano lifted a solo drive just over the wall in proper to lead off the inning. And though Glasnow received out of a jam later in the inning, his fading command and rising 91-throw pitch depend 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 nook from Ryan O’Hearn that slow-footed Teoscar Hernández couldn’t observe down).

And though Blake Treinen stranded a runner at third in the seventh — thanks in no small half to a beneficiant strike call against Manny Machado that negated a stroll — more hassle arose in the eighth, after Alexis Díaz began by hitting a batter and giving up a double to Laureano on a line drive to heart.

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

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

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

Dodgers reliever Alex Vesia, proper, celebrates with catcher Will Smith after the Dodgers’ 5-4 win over the Padres at Dodger Stadium on Sunday.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

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

Vesia, however, had a different plan in thoughts.

“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 appeared like all the momentum the Dodgers had constructed this weekend was instantly fading, and the collection would end with them only tied atop the standings, Betts instead flipped the script with his second 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 collection.

“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.”