Chris Taylor: Dodgers Outfielder Has Worked at Driveline This Winter

A couple months ago, we saw a video of Dodgers outfielder Mookie Betts putting in work at Driveline over the offseason. Driveline is a company that focuses on data-driven baseball player development program, and hundreds of big leaguers have worked out there over the past several years. In one brief part of Mookie’s video, he could be seen hugging LA teammate Chris Taylor.

Over the weekend at FanFest at Dodger Stadium, Taylor confirmed that he put in some work at Driveline over the winter to try to bounce back from his lackluster 2022 season.

So, in a winter that also saw Taylor get married in Hawaii and honeymoon in Australia, he also flew to Seattle. There, at the Driveline Baseball facility, he worked with its staff and logged information that has since been passed along to some of the Dodgers’ hitting staff. He said benefitted from working with weighted bats centered around generating bat speed and from tracking biometric data about the efficiency of his swing.

“A lot of our guys have done that,” Taylor said Saturday. “Everybody to different amounts. I think just going there for a day and hearing what they have to say, some valuable information. If you’re not taking advantage of all the resources given to you, what are you really doing? … I think it would be very stubborn to not give it a shot.”

The biggest struggle for Taylor in 2022 was the strikeouts. He’s always been a relatively high-K hitter, but after posting a 27.6% strikeout rate from 2017-21, CT3 saw that rate skyrocket to 35.2% last year. He had elbow surgery during the offseason before 2022, which might have contributed early, and he had a fractured foot at midseason and a neck issue late. Overall, he was just never able to get on track.

Taylor and the Dodgers are hoping his time at Driveline, along with the other work he’s put in all offseason, will help him come in hot and get off on the right foot in 2023. His bounce-back is an important part of the Dodgers’ plans this year, whether he’s playing center, left, or all over the field. LA is a better team when Taylor is going well.

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