Andy Pages embraces his ‘superpower' thanks to mentors like Raúl Ibañez

New York Times

08-05-2025

MIAMI — Andy Pages' season was about to slide out from under him before it really began. Or so he thought.
The Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder won the starting center-field job but had been worrying about his standing with the big-league club for months. Then, he struggled enough that the organization spurred a series of conversations with the 24-year-old who flashed as a rookie for the World Series champions.
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In the weeks since, Pages has surged. He's hitting .279 with an .827 OPS, moving from the fringes of the roster to an integral piece of the Dodgers' star-laden lineup. Pages credited the voices that helped him along the way, including former All-Star outfielder Raúl Ibañez, who returned to the organization last January as vice president of baseball development and special products.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts urged Pages to stop thinking and trust himself. For much of the opening weeks of the season, Pages said he got too passive. He wasn't used to hitting in the bottom of the order, and with reigning National League MVP Shohei Ohtani hitting in front of him, he felt he had to take pitches and work counts to get on base.
Roberts encouraged Pages to be who he's always been, trusting that the slugger, who put up eye-popping power numbers throughout the minors and managed to return from labrum surgery in 2023 with virtually no drop-off in production, was good enough.
'Hitting is not hard for him,' Roberts said. 'It's his superpower.'
Next, Pages met with president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, who echoed the organization's faith in him. The Dodgers did not add a center fielder this winter, allowing Pages and Korean signee Hyeseong Kim to essentially battle for the at-bats Tommy Edman wouldn't take between second base and center field. Kim's swing overhaul led the Dodgers to start him in the minors. Pages, despite feeling good about his swing, started the season in a 4-for-34 rut. That, paired with a series of defensive and base-running lapses, led Roberts to sit Pages for a game during the Dodgers' opening trip.
'Andy's a really talented player,' Friedman said. 'The path for a young player finding his footing in Major League Baseball is not always linear. He's had some ups and downs. But everyone's belief in him and what he's capable of never wavered.'
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Through it all, Pages has leaned on Teoscar Hernández. He and the two-time All-Star have what Roberts has called a 'little brother, big brother' relationship, with the two retreating to the club's hitting lab in spring training for hours after games to continue refining their swings. Hernández's reinforcement was frequent.
'It was thinking too much, trying everything he's trying to do in the cage, trying to do it here in the game,' Hernández said of Pages' early struggles. 'That's not going to work. But he's learning that routines and everything he does in the cage, the preparation for the game, you come here and react, not overthink it.'
Perhaps the biggest influence arrived in winter. Ibañez became a frequent confidant. Ibañez's role with the organization allows him flexibility, and he's frequently consulted by the team's hitting staff when it comes to certain players on the roster.
'Raúl is invaluable,' hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc said. 'You can't explain how much he helps.'
'(He) comes in and is just a good resource to reiterate anything that we want to say to him or get through to him,' the Dodgers' other hitting coach, Aaron Bates, said.
Ibañez downplayed his role with Pages, citing the work Van Scoyoc and Bates have put in with the young outfielder. The Dodgers made tweaks to Pages' swing in recent weeks. They'd noticed that in addition to falling behind often in counts, Pages struggled to catch up to fastballs. So they opened up his shoulders slightly at the plate and reduced how much the barrel of his bat wrapped around his head before he loaded up to swing. That 'freed him up,' Bates said, allowing him to take a more direct path to the baseball.
But Pages said the changes have been more mental than anything with his swing. Bates described Pages' time with Hernández and Ibañez as 'a mentorship.'
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Pages said Ibañez has helped him 'a lot,' echoing the positive reinforcement as he looked to make his mark.
'He's told me that there are times where everything is good with the swing and the hits don't fall,' Pages said in Spanish. 'So most players, when that happens, they try to change something, and that never works. He's always telling me to have confidence in the work I'm doing because the hits will fall. The moment will be there, and I'm seeing the results now.'
It comes at a good time.
Since Roberts first sat Pages against the Washington Nationals on April 7, he has proceeded to hit .337 with a 1.002 OPS over the ensuing month's worth of games. His defensive metrics have graded out positively in center field, according to Statcast's Outs Above Average. Hernández is expected to miss at least two weeks with a Grade 1 left adductor strain. Edman is already on the injured list with a right ankle issue. Pages has emerged as a complementary piece for a Dodgers team that has found its footing offensively, trailing only the Chicago Cubs and New York Yankees with 5.36 runs per game entering Wednesday.
This is the version of Pages the Dodgers have always hoped they could get.
'It was helpful to him to hear from so many different people in the organization just how much we believe in him, for him to exhale and go out and have fun playing the game,' Friedman said. 'He's a really gifted natural hitter. There aren't a ton of those guys on planet Earth.'
(Top photo of Andy Pages: Megan Briggs / Getty Images)