Dodgers notes: Daniel Hudson, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, MVP race

Daniel Hudson suffered a cruel twist of fate this season, returning after a year of rehabbing a torn ACL in his left knee, only to sprain the MCL in his right knee after only three games back.

The Dodgers reliever told Bill Plunkett at the Orange County Register that there’s a chance he could still return this season:

“We’re not going to try and put a date on it. I would ideally like to get into a handful of games before the playoffs. Get my feet underneath me. I feel like I could help this team in the playoffs. But I also don’t want to be just thrown out there and take up a roster spot from someone else who could give them more consistency because I’ve thrown in so few games this year. Like I said, it’s cautious optimism. But right now it’s looking pretty strong.”

Hudson last pitched for the Dodgers on July 5 and is currently on the 60-day injured list.

The race for National League MVP looks to be very heavy with Braves and Dodgers. Ronald Acuña Jr. and Matt Olson are the leading candidates for Atlanta, while Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman are contending for Los Angeles.

Mike DiGiovanna at the Los Angeles Times digs into why Betts has the edge over Freeman at the moment among the Dodgers MVP candidates.

In grieving her brother David’s death, Natalia Molina at the Los Angeles Times discovered how much baseball and the Dodgers were intertwined with his life:

David, as far as I know, did not ponder love languages. Yet he was fluent in the language of camaraderie, especially when the topic shifted to sports. After all, even strangers can talk about the Dodgers together. Who won, who lost and what catch/run/pitch made hearts stop — these are safer topics for conversation than politics or personal feelings. But sports talk can also transcend small talk and become a shared field of memories, a tie that binds.