The Los Angeles Dodgers are back on the road, and your Dodgers beat writers (Katie Woo and Fabian Ardaya) are back with Part 2 of our subscriber mailbag.The Dodgers face the Pittsburgh Pirates for three games before departing for the South Side for a three-game interleague set versus the Chicago White Sox. For a club that has yet to fully find its stride offensively, things are still pretty good in Dodgers Land. Los Angeles is 12 games over .500 and owns a comfy 7 1/2 game lead over the Arizona Diamondbacks in the NL West. Still, perhaps the top of the order can start producing more consistently, starting with the player named in our first question.Let’s get to it (and, in case you missed it, you can find Part 1 of this mailbag here).What in the world is wrong with Mookie Betts? – Mark S.Ardaya: First, let me recommend reading Katie’s recent conversation with Betts. It’s not often you hear a superstar speak so openly about expectations, as Betts does there.I do think there has to be a recalibration of sorts. While the Dodgers remain hopeful that Betts can recapture some of his superstar form, the construction of the Dodgers’ roster and Betts’ defensive floor as a shortstop mean the club can thrive even if Betts never reaches his peak offensive levels again.If you pair strong shortstop defense with even average or slightly above-average offensive production (like Betts managed to get to last season), that’s an extremely valuable player. Betts was worth 3.4 WAR by FanGraphs and 4.9 WAR by Baseball Reference. Just about every team in the sport would take that from that position.Betts likely won’t put up a .614 OPS (or 71 OPS+) the rest of the way. The underlying data is still fine through his first 133 plate appearances. Is the cleanup spot the best place to figure it out? Maybe not, but it’s not as if the Dodgers have another healthy right-handed hitting option that they’re dying to put into that spot with Andy Pages already hitting second.Woo: Betts said it best in a conversation I had with him in mid-May: “I’m in that season where I’m trying to keep up with the times. A lot of the things I did naturally don’t really work, so I have to find new things. And finding new things takes time. You don’t just find it in a day. It takes time, effort.”Betts is 33 and has had to change much of the routine that served as the foundation to his immensely successful career. His trial and error certainly show up in the stat line. But as Fabian notes, it’s hard for Dave Roberts to bat Betts elsewhere as he works his way through it. The handedness comes into play, as do Kyle Tucker and Will Smith’s offensive struggles. Bottom line: Betts doesn’t have to put up significant numbers offensively, especially with what he’s doing defensively. But he does have to put up better numbers than what he has currently. Luckily, he and the Dodgers have time to figure out how best to do that.The Dodgers recently placed six players on Keith Law’s updated top 50 MLB prospects list, four of whom were acquired in mostly minor trades. These are outsized returns for the LAD pro scouting group. In an era when many teams have restructured, reduced, or even eliminated pro scouting in favor of video analysis, how do the Dodgers approach this practice area differently than other teams? – Jay O.Ardaya: The Dodgers spend, and not just on their payroll. While the organization has poured resources into its analytics department as well, the Dodgers maintain the reputation for having one of the more robust pro and international scouting departments in the sport. It makes plenty of sense. While the Dodgers’ spending has reduced how much they can use in terms of draft pools or international bonus space, there is no limit on their ability to flip talent for talent. That means talent evaluation is extremely important not just with other organizations, but also with self-scouting. They’ve seen windows to acquire players they originally liked out of the draft, such as Mike Sirota, or to foresee breakouts in players such as River Ryan. Both of those guys were acquired for players about to be squeezed off the roster (Gavin Lux and Matt Beaty). The Dodgers have had to be creative, and they’ve been able to do so because of their scouting department.