Boston Red Sox Memories: Top Five Mookie Betts moments
Mookie Betts is gone but we still have plenty of fond memories from the star right fielder’s time with the Boston Red Sox to look back on.
The sting of losing a franchise player to a financially motivated trade has far from faded. Red Sox Nation isn’t quite ready to let go of Mookie Betts but he leaves behind many great memories from his six years in Boston.
Betts piled up a long list of accolades over a relatively short time. He’s made four consecutive All-Star appearances and earned four Gold Glove awards, three Silver Sluggers, a batting title and an MVP.
Baseball-Reference has valued Betts at 42.0 WAR for his career, which ranks 23rd among active players. Everyone ahead of him on this list of active players has at least three more years of experience and Mike Trout is the only one among them under the age of 30. Trout and Albert Pujols are the only active players to produce a higher WAR than Betts through their age 26 season.
The historically great start to his career had Betts on pace to join an elite class of Red Sox greats if he had remained in Boston for the majority of his career. Sadly, we’ll never know since ownership decided to use the threat of Betts bolting in free agency as an excuse to dump a boatload of salary.
The days of Betts delivering memorable moments in a Red Sox uniform are over but we’ll always have our favorite memories to reflect on. Here are a handful of my favorite Mookie Betts moments.
Amazing throw in Tampa Bay
Betts has provided plenty of production with his bat but his stellar defense in right field is equally as valuable. He’s piled up a collection of Gold Gloves for a reason and the cannon attached to his arm is one of them.
We saw that arm on display last September against the Tampa Bay Rays with Boston trailing by two runs in the bottom of the sixth inning. Hector Velazquez allowed a lead-off double to Ji-Man Choi, putting the threat of another run in scoring position.
Avisail Garcia followed by roping a double down the right field line to allow Choi to trot home easily. Garcia assumed he had the speed to stretch his hit into a triple but he learned the hard way not to test the arm of baseball’s best right fielder. Betts fired a laser that traveled 305 feet in the air all the way to third base. Rafael Devers swooped down to tag a sliding Garcia at third base for the out.
Testing Mookie?
— Red Sox (@RedSox) September 24, 2019
We don't recommend it. pic.twitter.com/bqlEo7P25V
He surprised himself with that throw, later saying it was the best of his career.
Betts finished the 2019 season tied for third among AL outfielders with 10 assists. He would probably have more if plays like this didn’t serve as a warning not to test his arm.
FanGraphs has a metric called outfield arm runs (ARM) that measures an outfielder’s ability to throw out runners and hold them from advancing. Since Betts entered the league in 2014, his 23.6 ARM leads major league outfielders.
Watching Betts prevent runners from scoring can be as exciting as watching him score runs himself. This amazing throw is one of many examples of how Betts can impact the game in the field.
Over-the-wall catch saves shutout
Betts can rack up assists with the best of them with his strong throwing arm by he’s just as capable of finishing the play himself with a spectacular catch. Sometimes in dramatic fashion to end the game. That was the case in September 2015 when Betts capped a win over the Baltimore Orioles to preserve a shutout for Rich Hill.
Hill was in the process of revitalizing his career after working his way back from independent ball when he joined the Red Sox rotation that season. He went 2-1 with a sparkling 1.55 ERA in four starts down the stretch to earn himself a new contract with the Oakland A’s that offseason.
That ERA wouldn’t have been quite as shiny if it weren’t for Betts. Hill was cruising through 8 2/3 innings, allowing only two hits and a walk to the Baltimore Orioles. He was one out away from a shutout when Chris Davis launched a deep fly ball to right field that looked destined for the bullpen.
Not with Betts patrolling the the outfield. He tracked the ball while carefully gliding back onto the warning track, leaped and made a spectacular catch over the right field wall. Betts nearly fell head over heels into the bullpen but managed to collect himself while securing the ball in his glove.
A two-run homer ultimately wouldn’t have done much damage in a game the Red Sox won by seven runs but it was meaningful for Hill, as it gave him the second complete game shutout of his career and first since 2006.
A walk-off home run is arguably the most thrilling play in baseball but robbing a home run to end the game is far more rare. How many outfielders can say they’ve ended a shutout in this manner? Mookie Betts can.
13-pitch grand slam
One of the many highlights of the 2018 season was the epic battle between Betts and Toronto Blue Jays starter J.A. Happ on a July night at Fenway Park.
Boston trailed by a run when Betts stepped to the plate with two outs in the fourth inning and the bases loaded. Happ threw everything he had at Betts but the Red Sox lead-off hitter spoiled his best offerings by fouling them off to stay alive.
On the 13th pitch, Betts finally found one in his wheelhouse, a fastball down in the zone that he crushed high over the towering Green Monster in left field for a grand slam.
Betts had entered the game without much success against Happ, going 5-for-31 (.161) in his career against the lefty prior to that plate appearance.
He was also a bit fortunate to have lasted 13 pitches. Betts got jammed on the fifth pitch of the at-bat, floating a pop-up into foul territory. Blue Jays first baseman Justin Smoak chased after it, only for the ball to clank off his glove when he tried to make a basket catch. The defensive miscue gave Betts a second life and he made them pay.
Happ threw a ball in the dirt on his 12th pitch of the at-bat that skipped away down the third base line. The runners held their positions but what if they had tried to advance? If that ball gets away from the catcher enough to tempt Eduardo Nunez into scampering home then the outcome could have been drastically different. Maybe Nunez gets thrown out to end the inning. Maybe he scores, which takes some of the steam out of the dramatic home run that followed – it’s no longer a grand slam in that case and the score is already tied, lowering the stakes.
A perfect storm of luck and perseverance to keep the at-bat alive allowed Betts the opportunity to energize the Fenway Faithful with one of the most thrilling moments of a historic season.
Three-home run games
Betts isn’t your typical slugger but his quick wrists and bat speed give him sneaky power. When he gets hot, his homers tend to come in bunches and he’s no stranger to the multi-home run game. In fact, Betts has five career games with three home runs, the most in franchise history.
His first two times recording this rare achievement came during his breakout 2016 season when he made his first All-Star appearance and finished as the runner-up in the MVP race.
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On May 31, Betts went 3-5 with three home runs and five RBI, providing nearly all the offense the Red Sox needed in a 6-2 win over the Orioles. Betts has always loved hitting at Camden Yards. The 15 career home runs he’s hit in Baltimore are his most in any ballpark outside of Fenway.
Betts followed with his second three-homer game on August 14 of that season. He drove in eight runs on four hits in a 16-2 route of the Arizona Diamondbacks.
At the age of 23, Betts became the youngest player with multiple three-homer games in the same season. He also joined the legendary Ted Williams as the only Red Sox players to do it twice in a season.
In case matching a franchise record wasn’t enough, Betts replicated his multiple three-homer achievement in 2018. He delivered three solo shots in a 10-1 win over the Los Angeles Angels in April. A couple of weeks later, Betts did the same to the Kansas City Royals in a narrow 5-4 victory.
His most recent three-homer game was last July against the New York Yankees. Betts drove in half of Boston’s runs in a 10-5 win. The Bronx Bombers were no match for the Betts Bomber. The Red Sox finished well behind the Yankees in the standings last year but taking three out of four at Fenway in late July sparked a glimmer of hope and Betts was a big part of that brief resurgence.
The first of Mookie’s three home runs against the Yankees led off the bottom of the first inning. Betts owns the franchise record with 20 career lead-off homers.
Seven other players in MLB history have at least five three-homer games. Only Sammy Sosa and Johnny Mize have more in their career (six) and Betts is the only hitter to join this group before the age of 27.
Most Valuable Player
The 2018 campaign from Mookie Betts was one for the ages. It was more than simply the best season by any hitter in the American League. This was one of the best years by a position player in franchise history.
Betts captured a batting title by hitting .346 while also leading the league with 129 runs and a .640 slugging percentage. He set a career-high with 32 home runs and drove in 80 RBI. Silver Slugger and Gold Glove awards were just the appetizers for the MVP hardware he would take home.
FanGraphs valued Betts at 10.4 WAR that season. Only Barry Bonds has produced a higher single-season fWAR in the 21st century (2001, 2002, 2004). That fWAR has only been topped by a Red Sox hitter six times in franchise history. Three of those belong to Ted Williams and one is by Tris Speaker. The other was Carl Yastrzemski‘s Triple Crown season in 1967. That’s the company Betts put himself in.
Mike Trout is the best player in baseball but even he can’t match Mookie’s MVP season. Trout’s best season was 10.2 fWAR in 2013. Baseball-Reference’s version agrees. Trout has three seasons with 10+ WAR by their calculation but none that can top the 10.9 WAR Betts produced in 2018.
dark. Next. Red Sox All-Decade Team
There are a lot of reasons to remember the 2018 season fondly. The Red Sox won a franchise record 108 games and a World Series championship. Those are team achievements though. If we’re looking specifically at the best moments Betts has provided, nothing tops joining the elite class of Major League Baseball by earning his first MVP.