Mookie’s a good Betts to be AL MVP

DETROIT — David Price is a Vanderbilt-educated Cy Young Award winner. He’s made five All-Star teams. He surrendered Derek Jeter’s 3,000th hit. Among the last eight American League MVP awards, five were won by Price’s current or former teammates — including Josh Donaldson in Toronto last year.

Price knows talent. So let’s pay close attention to what he said Saturday, when asked about resplendent Red Sox teammate Mookie Betts.

“Right now, I think he’s the best player in all of baseball,” Price said. “I have the utmost respect for Donaldson and Mike Trout and Jose Altuve. But Mookie’s been special. And when a guy has never done it before, that makes it a little more special.

“Watching him last season, I said, ‘He’s Andrew McCutchen Jr.’ He’s got a pair of the quickest hands in baseball. That was McCutchen: It didn’t matter how hard you threw. If you tried to throw a fastball in, he was going to hit it really hard to left field. It’s the same thing with Mookie.

“Early this year, teams would shift him, put three infielders on the left side. But then he hits a ground ball to the right side for a single, steals second and scores a run. That shuts down the shifting.”

Betts is a dashing, leaping, slugging antidote for a sport concerned about its “pace of action,” to borrow a favorite phrase of Commissioner Rob Manfred. Home runs? He hits them (28 this year, one behind David Ortiz for the team lead) and can deny them with spectacular catches. Betts’ base-stealing ability — he leads the Red Sox with 19 — has been slowed only by a new assignment: He’s batted cleanup five times over the past week, going 7-for-19 (.368) with two home runs and five RBIs. 

That’s right: As Ortiz nears the end of his storied career, he’s protected by a 5-foot-9 right fielder in his second full Major League season. The arrangement seems awkward only until you watch Betts lash line drives to left. Betts is on pace to be the first 23-year-old in MLB history with a season of 30 or more home runs, 20 or more stolen bases, an OPS of .900 or better, and 100 or fewer strikeouts.

Increasingly, descriptors like “superstar” and “MVP candidate” have been ascribed to Betts. They are accurate. And they do not bother him.

“You have to embrace it,” Betts said before Saturday’s 3-2 win over the Tigers. “It’s a matter of believing in yourself but also realizing how much more you still have …

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