Mookie Betts has taken a unique path to playing shortstop for the Los Angeles Dodgers. In fact, it stands out even in the long history of Major League Baseball.
In the summer of 2037, or thereabouts, a bronze plaque of Mookie Betts will be cast in Pittsburgh.
An artist will have frozen his oft-beaming face for immortalization and a writer will have completed a potentially more challenging task: Condensing his career into roughly 10 lines of resume lines to remember.
As Betts approaches age 32, the picture has largely taken shape. Top-of-the-order dynamo, hand-eye coordination savant, shockingly powerful athlete in a lithe 5-foot-10 package, champion and icon with two different legendary clubs.
The JAWS Hall of Fame rating system at Baseball Reference already ranks him as the eighth-best right fielder ever. Which is part of the difficulty for this poor future plaque scribe. More than a decade into this distinguished career, Betts is playing shortstop every night for one of the most talented teams ever assembled – a Los Angeles Dodgers team that seeks a second consecutive World Series title.
Climbing to the pinnacle of the game’s defensive spectrum in his 30s and conquering that turf would represent an extreme feat even for a player who inspired the #FeatsOfMookie hashtag. It would be a line unto itself on a plaque already threatening to overflow.
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Shortstop is a position you start at, often the position for the best kid on the Little League team. Many high schoolers who lure scouts play shortstop, center field or catcher. Most of them disperse across the diamond as they meander toward the majors.
The wildest success stories arrive in the majors, make their name as hotshot shortstops and move to third base (see Cal Ripken Jr.) or second base (like Ketel Marte and Marcus Semien) or the outfield (a la Fernando Tatis Jr.).
One Hall of Fame plaque already references a particularly successful journey from shortstop to the still-premium position in center field. The first sentence of Robin Yount’s Cooperstown honor recalls that he was “equally graceful at shortstop and in center field.” That was also the order in which he performed those roles, of course, making the switch after his age-28 season.
Yount is one of 91 players to man both shortstop and the outfield for 100 or more MLB games. The vast majority are utility types – Bill Hall, Mark DeRosa, Omar Infante – and 25 made at least one MLB All-Star Game. Just about everyone who made a clean switch did so with shortstop on the front end, like Tatis Jr., Ian Desmond and Jurickson Profar. (By the way: Four of the 91 currently play for the Dodgers, if you want to seek meaning in that.)
To find anyone doing anything like what Betts is attempting, you have to dig deeper. Only 11 players on record have become primary shortstops for the first time in their fifth major-league season or after. And Betts is only the second to make that jump from the outfield. The first was Howie Shanks of the 1917 Washington Senators (aka Grifs). Shanks was less productive in his 14-season career than Betts was in 2023.
A closer parallel, in terms of prominence, might be Gil McDougald. A sterling infielder on the star-studded 1950s New York Yankees, he won AL Rookie of the Year, made an All-Star team and twice received MVP votes playing a mix of second and third base before he was asked to try shortstop to succeed Phil Rizzuto.
“I’m not exactly in love with shortstop,” McDougald said at the time in 1956. “But I will play anywhere as long as I get to play. Personally, I’d prefer to play second base. That’s where I really feel at home. But I think that I can get to like playing shortstop, if I play there long enough.”
He spent two seasons as the primary shortstop, earning top-10 MVP finishes both years, before pivoting back to second base. More recently, the Baltimore Orioles and Dodgers gave superlative third base defender Manny Machado a season of run at shortstop as he approached free agency. It turned out to be a one-year experiment.
Mookie Betts: Winning Over Position
Players of Betts’ current caliber do not tend to be the ones asked to adjust for the good of the team.
More often, it’s unknown players, like the version of Betts the Boston Red Sox summoned to the majors in 2014. A second baseman by trade, the fifth-round pick had excelled in the minors and warranted a call-up. Dustin Pedroia was holding down the keystone, so the Red Sox tried Betts in the outfield. He had 55 minor-league games in center, but only four games in right, before Boston sent him to roam enormous, intricate right field at Fenway Park.
One of the most fluid, intuitive athletes to grace a baseball field, Betts figured it out in a hurry. He won six Gold Gloves and became one of the most valuable corner outfield defenders in baseball.
Ahead of the Dodgers’ 2024 season, Betts was planning to return to second base, his original professional position. But defensive struggles from Gavin Lux in spring training created an impromptu switch to shortstop. On that occasion, Betts struck a tone that wasn’t too different from McDougald in 1956.
“We just want to win. We don’t care how we really get there,” Betts told ESPN. “The most important thing is winning. As for me, I don’t care. I genuinely do not care. I’ve said this a million times. I just want to win. You can put me wherever. As long as I’m on the diamond, I’m going to do the best I can do and we’ll see what happens after that.”
This time, though, Betts didn’t ace the test. The throw from shortstop didn’t come naturally, he was inconsistent fielding balls to his left, and Statcast rated him clearly below average. When he returned from a wrist injury later in the summer, the Dodgers pushed him back to right field for the championship run.
It seems Betts could not abide a challenge unconquered. As ESPN reported this spring, he spent the winter giving himself a crash course on shortstop.
A month is not enough time to rule on defensive ability, but Betts has certainly appeared more polished. He’ll occasionally have plays in which his work seems to bubble up through his motions. But he’s also making the sort of spectacular plays he made routine in right field. Early metrics grade him out a touch above average.
In a clubhouse already glowing with seemingly infinite possibility of Shohei Ohtani, Betts is testing a new frontier of his own. If he maintains his hold on the position and keeps improving, he’ll be opening a new dimension of what’s possible in a ballplayer’s 30s.
Research support provided by Stats Perform’s Jesse Abrahams. For more coverage, follow us on social media on Instagram, Bluesky, Facebook and X.
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