Andy Pages Turns Daily Drills Into Elite Center Field Work — Dodger Game Today

Andy Pages turned dodger game today into a reminder that daily work can reshape a roster. Once viewed as a possible future DH, he has become one of baseball’s preeminent defensive center fielders. That shift also answered a long-running Dodgers outfield problem.

Pages And Dino Ebel

Dino Ebel said the pair completed their daily drills on Sunday morning, the kind of routine that has built Pages’ reputation in center. Ebel added, "I could sit here in hindsight and say, ‘Oh yeah, I did,’ but no," and then put the point plainly: "I mean, the guy’s worked extremely hard."

Pages described the process in Spanish: "We’re working on all the different things I’ve struggled with, trying to improve those every day," and that steady repetition is what changed the conversation around his defense. The Dodgers had carried outfield problems for years, and his emergence closed a massive question mark in the middle of that group.

Dodgers Outfield Problem

The move from bat-first projection to defensive reliability is the real change here. Pages was once seen as a potential future DH, but the daily drills turned him into a center fielder the Dodgers can trust, which is a different kind of value than a hot stretch at the plate. It gave the club a cleaner answer in a spot that had lingered as a weakness.

That same roundup also put Tanner Scott’s season into sharper focus. Last season, he posted a 4.74 ERA and allowed 11 home runs after leaving too many pitches in bad spots when he got to two strikes.

Tanner Scott And Ohtani

Scott said, "I’d get the two strikes, and I’d leave the ball in the heart of the plate, and it was causing a lot of damage," while Mark Prior said last year, "Last year was weird because he came in and he was throwing a ton of strikes," followed by, "Problem is, he was throwing strikes at the wrong times."

Prior’s point separates volume from command. Scott’s uptick in strike-throwing was not the Dodgers’ idea, and his own reset came later, when he said, "I just tried washing it away," then described starting over on January 1 with a tougher mentality and a return to what he used to do.

Ohtani is in his second season as a Dodgers pitcher and has simplified his pitch mix by handedness. Against right-handed hitters, he is throwing fastball and sweeper; against left-handed hitters, he is using fastball, sweeper, and split, while still saving his other three pitches for special occasions.

For the Dodgers, Pages’ rise carries the clearest on-field payoff. The outfield question is no longer the same one it was before his defensive leap, and that leaves the club with a steadier center field as the rest of the roster pieces continue to settle around him.