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WASHINGTON — Andy Pages shook his head with a grin, raised his clasped hands to the sky, then gave thanks with a much-needed sigh of relief.
It didn’t matter that the Dodgers were getting blown out Tuesday night. Or that his fifth-inning home run did little to halt the team’s unexpected skid on this week’s road trip.
For one moment, one at-bat, the second-year slugger finally experienced a moment of reassurance, hitting a two-strike slider beyond the reach of two leaping Washington Nationals outfielders for his first home run of the season.
“It was definitely a sense of relief,” Pages said in Spanish through a team interpreter after the game. “Just like a big, major breath of fresh air, for sure.”
In a 6-5 win over the Nationals, the Dodgers built, then blew, an early four-run lead before finally prevailing behind a go-ahead seventh-inning rally.
Up to that point, the season had begun ominously for the 24-year-old center fielder. He was four for 35 at the plate. He had made several mental mistakes on defense and the basepaths. And he’d grown increasingly burdened by the precariousness of his situation, inching ever closer to a James Outman-esque trajectory of regressing from a productive rookie season to a disheartening sophomore campaign.
Pages didn’t show those simmering emotions as he left the batter’s box. He kept his head down and face straight as he trotted around the bases.
But back in the dugout, the former highly touted prospect finally let himself feel some satisfaction. For weeks, pressure had been building. This was a sudden release.
“It gave me a lot more confidence,” Pages reiterated. “To get some results … was a major lift off my back.”
Despite batting .248 with 13 home runs and 46 RBIs last season — a promising if inconsistent rookie performance punctuated by a two-home-run, four-RBI performance in Game 5 of the National League Championship Series — Pages knew he’d have few certainties this year.
From the beginning of spring training, he said, “the team told me that I didn’t have a guaranteed spot, that I had to work my way to get a big-league spot.”
Although Pages broke camp as the primary center fielder, his early struggles had been weighing on him.
“That’s added a little bit of stress to my day-to-day,” he acknowledged. “I feel good. It’s just some of the things that I’ve been working through haven’t worked out.”
Blunders in the outfield (where he has misplayed several fly balls, including a rocket from Philadelphia Phillies star Bryce Harper last weekend) and on the bases (where he has run through stop signs and been caught twice on overaggressive baserunning decisions) were the most glaring moments of failure over the first two weeks.
“Some plays that I just need to make,” Pages said, “I haven’t made them.”
At the root of his frustrations, however, has been his inability to consistently produce at the plate — where, even after collecting four hits and two home runs in his last three games, he is batting just .171 with a .648 on-base-plus-slugging percentage.
After all, the main reason Pages is on the roster over other options such as utility man Hyeseong Kim (the slick-fielding offseason signing from South Korea who opened the year in the minors to work on revamping his swing) and outfielder Esteury Ruiz (the 2023 American League stolen base leader acquired from the Athletics last week) is his bat.
Thus, even over an exceedingly small sample size entering this week’s series in Washington, his lagging numbers had become cause for concern.
“I’m trying to do the things that I can do every day, to work hard, to get better at the plate, making adjustments,” Pages said Monday, when manager Dave Roberts kept him out of the lineup to let him reset mentally.
The Dodgers’ pitchers struggled with starter Blake Snell out of the lineup, falling behind early and losing 8-2 to the Nationals on Tuesday.
“I’ve been doing a lot of good things,” Pages insisted. “But balls aren’t falling.”
To Roberts, Pages’ slump had less to do with swing mechanics and more with “passivity” in his offensive approach.
An aggressive hitter ordinarily, Pages seemed too cautious in the box. Batting near the bottom of the lineup — often in the No. 9 hole with Shohei Ohtani behind him in the leadoff spot — Pages started taking more pitches than usual and shortening his swing to go the other way.
It has helped him walk more, Pages drawing free passes at double the rate he did last year. But the pop in his bat had gone missing. Routine fly outs to right field were an overly common occurrence.
“Just to be a little bit more aggressive, shifting the field a little bit more towards the center, the big part of the field, I think would be more beneficial,” Roberts said.
Tuesday’s home run, hit on an arching line to the left-center-field bullpen, served as a long-awaited first example. Another came Wednesday afternoon, in two starkly contrasting midgame at-bats.
In the fourth inning of the series finale against the Nationals, Pages took three consecutive thigh-high, center-cut sinkers from right-hander Jake Irvin, kicking himself after striking out looking with Ohtani on deck.
“I’m not used to hitting in that part of the order, and I’m trying to see as many pitches as I can,” Pages said, concurring with Roberts’ assessment of his overly conservative approach. “Sometimes I get too passive for that reason, which isn’t good for me.”
Thus, his next time up in the seventh, Pages swung at three straight sliders from reliever Eduardo Salazar. The first two he whiffed on. But the third, which was left up in the zone and out over the plate, Pages launched to the left-field seats for a tying blast — his second home run in a 24-hour span.
“I just tell him to go aggressive,” said veteran teammate Teoscar Hernández, who has become a close mentor of Pages since early last season. “He’s an aggressive hitter. So just get ready to hit.”
Roberts agreed, noting Pages is still “calibrating” the right balance of patience and aggression.
“He needs to kind of figure out where his strengths are in the hitting zone,” Roberts added, “and if he sees it there, then just be as aggressive as you need to be.”
Among Dodgers hitters, only Will Smith has better early-season numbers than Shohei Ohtani. But it remains unclear when Ohtani will pitch this season.
It’s all part of the continuing education of Pages; the kind of growing pains the Dodgers are willing to tolerate, for now, in hopes he can blossom into a more consistent offensive force as an everyday player.
There are still defensive fundamentals to drill home and baserunning mistakes to eliminate. There are still alternatives down the depth chart too, if Pages can’t turn this two-homer outburst into a more prolonged period of success.
But, “for him to start getting results is good,” said another veteran teammate, Kiké Hernández. “I know what it is to be young and struggling in the big leagues. There’s people behind you trying to take your job. I know how that feels. But once you start getting a little more calm and loose — that’s what it seems like with his at-bats right now. He’s starting to get in a rhythm.”
Teoscar Hernández added, with a wide smile after Pages’ home run Wednesday helped lead a come-from-behind win: “He’s gonna hit. He’s a good hitter. He’s gonna be fine. And he’s gonna help us a lot this year too.”
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