Dodgers Look to Sustain Will Smith’s Exceptional Production

In Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, and Freddie Freeman, the Dodgers don’t lack for superstars with potent bats, but so far this season, Will Smith is swinging — and, notably, not swinging — just about as well as any of them. The two-time All-Star catcher is off to an exceptionally hot start, particularly with runners in scoring position, and the Dodgers recently shook up their roster with an eye towards helping him maintain a high level of production later into the season.

The 30-year-old Smith is hitting .333/.456/.511, good enough to lead the NL in on-base percentage and to rank third in wRC+ (175) behind only Freeman (191) and Ohtani (182). Often batting ahead of either Max Muncy or Michael Conforto — both of whom have struggled thus far this year — he’s been pitched around to some degree, and he’s shown exceptional plate discipline:

Both Smith’s chase rate and walk rate rank second in the NL; the former is 4.6 percentage points below his career mark, while the latter is seven points above. According to Robert Orr’s SEAGER metric — a measure of how well a batter identifies and swings at the pitches against which he can do real damage — Smith ranks in the 97th percentile this year, well above even his previous strong showings. As Baseball Prospectus 2025 summarized, “Smith’s superpower is this: working the count until he’s ahead, then carefully selecting mistakes or get-me-over pitches to drive into the outfield.”

What might be the most remarkable aspect of Smith’s performance to date is how well he’s hit with runners in scoring position, which he’s had no shortage of given the big guns batting ahead of him:

Holy smokes! It’s wild to look at the upper reaches of that leaderboard and see the vast differences in strikeout and walk rates, from Hernández’s refusal to take a free pass to Kelly’s ability to avoid swinging and missing. But I digress. Among batters with at least 40 plate appearances with runners in scoring position this season, Smith’s batting average ranks first, his on-base percentage second behind only Judge, his wRC+ fourth, and his slugging percentage sixth. This isn’t exactly a fluke, as Smith owns a career .304/.404/.495 (140 wRC+) mark in 829 PA with runners in scoring position since debuting in 2019. That wRC+ is 12 points better than his overall mark — the league as a whole is typically about five points ahead — and where he’s walked 11.1% of the time and struck out 18.5% overall during his career, those marks improve to 13.9% and 15.9% with runners in scoring position.

I should point out that while that 12-point wRC+ gap is impressive, it’s nowhere near the high for this period. Among batters with 400 or more PA with runners in scoring position since the start of 2019, Jonah Heim has the largest gap, 40 points (126 with RISP, 86 overall). Among those with an overall wRC+ of 100 or higher during that span, the largest gap belongs to Garrett Cooper, 34 points (141 with RISP, 107 overall), and among those with an overall wRC+ of 120 or higher during that span, it’s Smith’s teammate Hernández with the largest gap, 26 points (150 with RISP, 124 overall).

Asked before Saturday’s game at Citi Field about what has made Smith and Hernández so successful with runners in scoring position, manager Dave Roberts hit some old-school notes with his answer:

“I think that in this day and age, guys just don’t value driving in a run and don’t know how to get a base hit, and I think those two guys are very good at it… I think there’s an inevitable regression with those [batting average with runners in scoring position] numbers, but I still feel that the intent, the focus, in those situations will continue.”

Beyond his exceptional plate discipline, Smith is swinging harder and making better contact. His average swing speed of 69.5 mph is 1.6 mph faster than last year, though it still ranks in just the 16th percentile, but his squared-up and blast rates have both improved (from 27.1% to 29.6% for the former and from 8.7% to 12.9% for the latter). He’s gained 2.3 mph in exit velocity (from 89.4 mph to 91.7 mph), and both his 13.9% barrel rate and 48.1% hard-hit rate are career bests. Those last three figures all rank in the 77th to 84th percentiles.

As for cooling off in general, Smith is no stranger to torrid starts and late fades, which probably owe something to the cumulative wear and tear he sustains over the course of the season, if not bigger injuries (he had a concussion in 2023, and a deep bone bruise in his left ankle last year). Here’s a look at what he’s done through the Dodgers’ first 54 games of the season in each of the past five campaigns:

Considering that Smith posted a 121 wRC+ overall from 2021–24, you can get a sense of the extent to which his offense tailed off over the final two-thirds of those seasons. While he was on pace to produce 17.1 WAR in those campaigns, even the 15.5 WAR he actually produced was still enough to nose past J.T. Realmuto for the major league lead among catchers.

Looking at it from the vantage of first half/second half, from 2021–2024, Smith hit .269/.365/.478 (132 wRC+) while averaging 74 games prior to the All-Star break (oddly, it wasn’t until 2023 that he made an All-Star team). In those second halves, he tailed off to a still-respectable .241/.327/.429 (107 wRC+) while averaging 56 games, but by October, his bat was out of gas, as he hit .211/.295/.414 (91 wRC+) in the postseason. Last year, while catching a career-high 117 games, he dipped from a 130 wRC+ in the first half to 78 in the second and then 62 during the Dodgers’ October championship run, though he did homer in each postseason round.

Mindful of the extent to which they’ve leaned on Smith, whose 3971.1 innings caught from 2021–24 was 459 more than any catcher besides Realmuto, the Dodgers have swapped out his backups. On May 14, the team designated Austin Barnes for assignment and called up catching prospect Dalton Rushing from Triple-A Oklahoma City. The 35-year-old Barnes, whom the Dodgers acquired from the Marlins in the same December 2014 blockbuster that sent Dee Strange-Gordon to Miami and brought Enrique Hernández to Los Angeles, debuted in 2015 and spent ’17–18 backing up Yasmani Grandal. Barnes went on to help the Dodgers win four pennants and two World Series; his one-out single in the sixth inning of Game 6 of the 2020 World Series — which Los Angeles trailed 1-0 at the time — turned the lineup over, spelling the end of Blake Snell’s night and sparking the go-ahead rally that sent the Dodgers to their first championship in 32 years.

But for as adept as he was at handling the pitching staff, Barnes was rarely a good hitter (43 wRC+ this year, 85 career). With the 24-year-old Rushing hitting .308/.424/.514 (144 wRC+) with five homers in 31 games at Oklahoma City, the Dodgers decided it was time to take a look at the top position player in their system. A 60-FV prospect (and like Smith, a Louisville alum), Rushing placed eight on our preseason Top 100 Prospects list thanks to his plus-plus arm, above-average power, and average hit tool, with Eric Longenhagen summarizing, “Rushing has developed into a good defensive catcher and well-rounded offensive threat. He may force the Dodgers to find a way to roster both him and Will Smith at the same time.”

That’s exactly what happened, and it was a move the Dodgers — who last week released both Barnes and another longtime member of their core, Chris Taylor — didn’t take lightly. “This was certainly a tough conversation. Austin is a Dodger for life. He helped us win the championship, caught the last pitch in 2020 in the World Series, and he’s done a lot of great things in the community for the Dodgers, for myself personally,” said Roberts of the move at the time. “I just think that for us right now, with what Dalton Rushing is doing on the performance side, it’s an opportunity to challenge him, expand his growth, give him an opportunity to log some major league games and essentially give him some runway.”

The plan is for Rushing to catch two games a week, serve as a pinch-hitter off the bench, and build relationships with the Dodgers’ pitchers, some of whom — including Clayton Kershaw and Tony Gonsolin — he caught during rehab assignments at Oklahoma City. The Dodgers are hoping that his development allows him to not only carve out a place for himself but to help preserve Smith.

On Saturday at Citi Field, Roberts gushed about Rushing. “I see a baseball rat, a guy that wants to learn, a guy that respects what guys have done, [respects] the game. He feels that he’s going to be a superstar. I love him in the box, he’s very confident, he controls the hitting zone. He’s going to be a good one for a long time.”

Rushing isn’t there yet. On Saturday, he went 0-for-3, with two strikeouts and an RBI on a three-foot chopper that looked as though it might have caught his own foot but brought home Tommy Edman. Since his call-up, Rushing is 4-for-16 with a double but eight strikeouts in 17 plate appearances.

Rushing’s apprenticeship could be a lengthy one. Smith is signed through 2033 via a 10-year, $140-million extension that has just a $12.4 million AAV thanks to deferrals. With the DH spot blocked by Ohtani (though it might free up once in awhile after he returns to the mound, likely not until after the All-Star break) and first base by Freeman, the easy avenues for Smith to find time at other positions are blocked. A shortstop in high school, he did play 58 games at third base in the minors and was considered an above-average defender there by Baseball America as late as 2018 (when he played 43 games at third and caught 49 games), but he took so well to catching that he left the hot corner behind. Rushing is the more likely candidate to make cameos at other positions, as he’s played 38 games at first base and 33 in left field — Taylor’s primary outfield spot, ahem — since being drafted in the second round in 2022.

While this year has been an exception thus far, thanks in part to Smith, Kelly, and the Mariners’ Cal Raleigh, offense from the catching spot is generally in short supply. With Rushing joining Smith and hopefully giving him a few extra days off, the Dodgers hope they’ve found yet another advantage. By the looks of the NL West standings, where they lead both the Padres and Giants by just two games, they may well need it.