How Andy Pages went from World Series benching to playing like a star

Andy Pages has been one of the best players in baseball this season.

Entering Wednesday, Pages had a .299/.348/.534 slash line with 12 home runs in 55 games. His 2.7 WAR (per FanGraphs) was tied with Corbin Carroll for the second most among all position players.

If you watched him in the 2025 regular season, maybe that isn’t a surprising development. After all, Pages had a .774 OPS in 156 games last year, along with 27 home runs, 14 stolen bases and great defense at all three outfield positions. Following a 4.1 WAR season, expecting a step forward in Pages’ age-25 season seemed reasonable.

Except, of course, Pages’ season didn’t end there. Pages struggled mightily at the plate throughout the Dodgers’ World Series run, posting a .211 OPS with 11 strikeouts and no walks across 16 games. The struggles were so pronounced that manager Dave Roberts benched Pages for the final three games of the World Series.

Obviously, Pages still made a pronounced impact with his season-saving catch in Game 7 of the Fall Classic. And you don’t necessarily want a 16-game postseason sample against elite pitching staffs to warp a player’s outlook too much. But there were at least some questions about his overall offensive profile entering this season after his October struggles.

Instead, Pages has made some real changes at the dish, and has quickly put those postseason issues behind him with an excellent start in 2026. Here’s how the 25-year-old has blossomed as a potential budding star for the Dodgers.

The following numbers are entering Wednesday’s games.

Improved overall production

It’s probably not surprising to know that Pages, who is running a .299 average and a .534 slugging percentage, is hitting the ball harder this season. What is more notable is just how pronounced those changes have been.

Pages has improved his hard-hit rate (percentage of batted balls hit 95-plus mph) from 37.2 percent last season to 46.6 percent this year. That is the fourth-largest jump among 188 qualifying hitters and Pages’ hard-hit rate has jumped from the 24th percentile to the 79th percentile.

His average exit velocity, too, has skyrocketed this season. Whereas he had an 88.6 mph average exit velocity in 2024 and 2025, that number is up to 90.2 mph, placing him in the 62nd percentile. His 1.6 mph improvement is a top-20 improvement among qualifying hitters.

Interestingly, those improvements haven’t led to a higher barrel rate, as he’s getting fewer balls in the air. But it has helped his expected batting average jump from .258 last year to .286 this year, a top-20 improvement. That .286 xBA places him in the 89th percentile of all MLB hitters, while his improved .355 expected wOBA is in the 77th percentile.

"I feel really comfortable in my zone, really comfortable in the pitches I'm able to handle, and all the work I put in, in Spring Training is showing,” Pages said through interpreter Juan Dorado earlier this year.

While there aren’t as many notable changes in his plate discipline, Pages certainly feels better at the dish.

“Just understanding my zone, trying to take pitches and hit pitches in my zone, pitches where I feel my strengths,” Pages said. “Obviously learning a little bit more about the pitches or the pitchers, and being able to attack them.”

Pages’ plate discipline numbers -- strikeout rate, walk rate, whiff rate and swing rate -- aren’t noticeably different from years past. If there’s one noticeable difference, it’s that he’s seeing 46.2 percent of pitches in the zone, a career low and the first time that’s been below 50 percent.

“I've been able to kind of focus on pitches that I can handle, pitches in the zone, as opposed to last year, where I felt like I was over-eager on pitches out of zone,” Pages said. “I'm still aggressive, and I want to be aggressive, but I want to be aggressive in the zone.”

Another area Pages has improved is his damage against all pitch types. He’s slugging .488 with seven home runs against fastballs. He’s been even better against breaking balls (curveballs, sliders, sweepers), as Pages has four home runs, a .328 average and .623 slugging percentage in 65 plate appearances. Even against offspeed pitches (changeups, splitters), he’s recorded seven hits in 21 at-bats.

A lot of these improvements stem from intense offseason work, using the commonly-used Trajekt machine, essentially a pitching robot that shows video of any pitcher's delivery, then throws all of his pitches from the appropriate arm angle.

“I think I spent every single day in the offseason and during Spring Training working off the Trajekt machine, maybe like 30 minutes to an hour,” Pages said. “Working on it, seeing more pitches, and I think that's obviously helped being able to identify better pitches through the work that I put in."

The one pitcher Pages used a lot on the Trajekt during Spring Training? Pirates’ ace Paul Skenes, who is well-known not only for his fast rise to dominance but also his deep pitch mix of nasty fastballs, breaking balls and offspeed pitches.

This progression has made Pages one of the most valuable Dodgers so far in the 2026 season. After spending most of his Dodgers career hitting in the bottom of the lineup, his offensive improvements have led to the club using him towards the top of the vaunted L.A. lineup. Since May 20, Pages has hit no lower than fifth in the order.

There are infinite reasons to explain the Dodgers’ success over the last decade-plus, but Pages’ progression as a legitimately good MLB player is yet another example. Signed as an international free agent out of Cuba in 2018, Pages has progressed to playing like a star, and gives the Dodgers even more of a chance for a third straight title this year.

MLB.com’s Dodgers club reporter Sonja Chen contributed reporting to this story.