Here’s the thing about owning the best roster in baseball: the cracks only show when the foundation moves. And right now, behind the plate in Los Angeles, the foundation is moving.
Will Smith has been the Dodgers’ primary catcher since 2019 — 110-plus games each of the last five seasons, an All-Star, a cornerstone. He’s played 52 games this year. He hasn’t appeared in one since June 5. An inflamed disk in his neck has him on the injured list with no clear return date, and the updates aren’t exactly reassuring.
“He’s taking a week of doing no activity to hopefully calm his neck down,” manager Dave Roberts told reporters on July 17. “He hasn’t been able to get over the hump. It just wasn’t recovering. It was flaring up.”
That’s not a rehab progression. That’s a shutdown. And it forces a hard question for a team that had been widely linked to Detroit Tigers ace Tarik Skubal as a potential deadline splash: do you still chase the starter, or do you fix the position that touches every single pitch?
Enter Dalton Rushing, the second-year catcher who has played 62 games this season and is learning — publicly, painfully — what it means to run a major-league staff when the guy in front of you vanishes indefinitely.
On June 24 against the Minnesota Twins, Rushing and Shohei Ohtani couldn’t get on the same page through the first two innings. Ohtani eventually took over the pitch-calling himself to navigate the outing. Rushing sat on the bench between innings while Freddie Freeman and Roberts each came over to talk to him at separate moments.
“Good thing he’s as good as he is and he can take control of the game, but it’s pretty embarrassing,” Rushing said afterward. “They’ve always got my back. Once again, it’s embarrassing that I need support like that. I’m a grown man, and it’s a pretty tough pill to swallow.”
Roberts confirmed the disconnect: “They were just out of sync early, and you could tell. I think both guys were frustrated and trying to get on the same page.”
Ohtani still struck out eight over six innings. The talent bailed out the breakdown. That’s not a sustainable model over 60 remaining games.
And the bat isn’t helping. Rushing is currently in an 0-for-14 slump after drawing a walk in the second game of a July 19 doubleheader against the Yankees. He started the first game and pinch-hit in the second. The hits have stopped. The defensive questions haven’t.
Behind Rushing sits Eliezer Alfonzo, a 26-year-old who made his major-league debut on July 5 — days after learning that his mother and sister were among those killed by the devastating earthquakes in Venezuela. Alfonzo spent nine years buried in the Detroit Tigers’ organization before the Dodgers gave him his shot. He started the nightcap of that Yankees doubleheader and collected his first big-league hit in a 2-1 loss. Ten games into his career, he’s a story of perseverance, not a solution for a World Series contender.
So here’s the math: one catcher on the IL with a neck injury that won’t cooperate, one catcher who can’t sync with the best pitcher on the planet and is hitless in two weeks, and one rookie carrying unimaginable grief who has been in the big leagues for three weeks. The trade deadline is approaching. The Dodgers’ front office has built its reputation on aggressive, precision-targeted moves. This one might not be a luxury. It might be a necessity.
Tarik Skubal would look sensational in Dodger blue. But a starting pitcher needs someone to catch him.