Swanson: Dodgers’ Freddie Freeman finds a pulse, can Mookie Betts do the same?

LOS ANGELES — The good news: The Dodgers’ magic number is two, and they can wrap up the National League West title for the 11th time in 12 seasons with a win on Thursday night.

The big news: Hey, batters-batters, look alive! Freddie Freeman has a pulse – and a single and a double in the Dodgers’ 4-3 back-and-forth victory over the hard-chasing San Diego Padres.

That’s big news in a big-picture sort of way because his production – lacking in the Dodgers’ past two all-too-brief playoff stints – will be critical to the Dodgers’ championship aspirations this postseason.

The bad news? Mookie Betts is still M.I.A., hitless in eight at-bats in this pivotal series, a postseason dress rehearsal if ever there was one – and Betts’ cue to flip the switch … off.

And the Dodgers need his contributions just as badly.

If the best defense really is a good offense, that’s never more true than when a defense is predicated by a pitching staff that’s held together with bubble gum and duct tape and fans’ strained sense of hope.

This club’s pitchers need their teammates at the plate to take some pressure off of them. They need for the Dodgers’ superstar batters to give them some breathing room, to purchase some much-needed insurance, to be able to place some winning Betts.

But so far in this week’s series with postseason stakes, Betts has gone 0 for 8, including popping up weakly to every Padres infielder on Thursday, a performance that’s both not like him and also like him, reminiscent of his recent postseason production – or lack of production – with the pressure on.

Last year, Betts went 0 for 11 as the Dodgers were swept by the Arizona Diamondbacks in three games in a National League Division Series, a series in which Freeman was just 1 for 10. The previous postseason, Betts went 2 for 14 as the 111-win Dodgers were upset 3-1 in an NLDS by the 89-win Padres.

It’s piling up into something of a wreck, but still it’s a small sample size compared with Betts’ regular-season prowess. A perennial All-Star and the NL MVP runner-up last season, he hit .307 last season in 2023 and is batting .293 this season.

That guy is in there, somewhere.

It isn’t as though Betts hasn’t come through at pressure points in the past, even if his playoff numbers didn’t tell the whole story – until they did.

Until Betts’ bat helped the Dodgers to the 2020 World Series title, when he hit .296 with 21 hits, two home runs, eight RBIs and 15 runs scored in 18 games. And until he lost the plot more recently.

Before that, he was the dynamic talent who found ways to contribute in every which way for the Boston Red Sox, coming through consistently in 21 playoff games from 2016 through 2018. He hit only .227 with four RBIs and only home run (off the Dodgers’ Clayton Kershaw) in that span, but those numbers didn’t do justice to all the ways he influenced Boston’s title run.

How, in Boston’s 16-1 victory over the New York Yankees in Game 3 of the ALDS that year, Betts pushed across the first of seven fourth-inning runs with a bases-loaded walk. Or how, in Boston’s Game 2 win in the ALCS against Houston, he scored in the seventh after drawing a leadoff walk and advancing on a wild pitch and two passed balls and was serenaded with “MVP” chants.

How, in Game 2 of the World Series against the Dodgers, it was Betts’ two-out single against Hyun-Jin Ryu that spurred Dodgers manager Dave Roberts to bring in Ryan Madson from the bullpen – a fateful move because the reliever surrendered a bases-loaded walk to tie the score, then a two-run single that put the Red Sox ahead for good and gave them a 2-0 series lead.

Recently, about all the Dodgers (an MLB-best 94-64) have been able to depend on Betts to do in the biggest moments is be a buzzkill. To follow The Sho that’s rocking and rolling – a fired-up Ohtani went 2 for 3 and twice drove in a go-ahead run on Wednesday – and quiet a stadium filled with nearly as many of Betts’ No. 50 jerseys as the 50-50 club founder’s No. 17s.

After Ohtani walked in the first inning Wednesday, Betts popped the first pitch he saw to second. In the third, he popped up to third. After Ohtani doubled in Gavin Lux in the fourth, Betts popped up again on the first pitch he saw, this time to first, stranding runners in scoring position. And then, after Ohtani singled in Will Smith and stole second (No. 56 this season) in the sixth, Betts popped out again, to shortstop.

“I think what it is, is he’s chasing,” Roberts said. “I don’t think it’s pressing, I think he’s got to get back in the hitting zone. I haven’t dug in on numbers, but the chase rate is certainly up. He’s expanding, and so that’s something he doesn’t typically do. So we have to get him back in his hitting zone.”

Behind him in the order, Freeman found something when he poked a single to left field in the third inning – at the time, the first hit in 12 at-bats between he and Betts.

That softly placed base hit might have been enough to knock the lid off the basket, because when Freeman led off the seventh, we saw him smack a feel-good 2-and-1 pitch to deep left-center field.

“He caught a barrel and was happy about that,” Roberts said. “It was good to see him smile.”

And suddenly, instead of panicking about him, Dodgers fans are panning back a bit and realizing Freeman – who is hitting a below-his-own-standards .283 this season – just notched his third multi-hit game in four outings.

Now if Betts could just see one go down with the pressure on, perhaps he can stop chasing too.