Dalton Rushing had every reason to disappear this week. Instead, he went 4-for-4 with a homer.
Let’s actually sit with what this kid has been dealing with, because it’s not normal. Will Smith, the actual starting catcher, the guy who’s been the steady presence in this clubhouse for years, has been out with a neck injury since before June. He hasn’t started baseball activities yet. Nobody’s even pretending he’s back before the All-Star break. So the job, the real everyday job, has been sitting on the shoulders of a 25-year-old who was still fighting for playing time a year ago.
And it got ugly for a second. Rushing had a very public, very rare moment of friction with Shohei Ohtani earlier this season. Dugout drama, the kind that gets clipped a thousand times and turned into a referendum on whether this kid can actually handle the job. You lose your cool with the best player alive, on camera, while you’re auditioning for the starting spot on a team defending back-to-back titles? That’s about as bad as it gets. That’s the moment where a young player either shrinks, or he doesn’t.
He didn’t.
Nobody Told Dalton Rushing He Was Just a Fill-In
This week he went to the Chinatown branch of the LA Public Library and read to kids as part of the Dodgers Foundation’s LA Reads program. When reporters brought up Ohtani, he didn’t duck it. “There’s going to be times where things are turned against you, and there’s nothing you can do about it,” he said. Read that again. That’s a guy who knows exactly what people are saying about him and has already decided how he’s going to answer it.
Two days later, he answered it.
Four hits. A two-run homer. A 12-7 win over the Padres. He’s now up to nine home runs and 25 RBIs in just 52 games, which is genuinely wild when you think about the circumstances he’s been playing under. This isn’t a guy getting soft at-bats in low-leverage spots. This is a guy holding down the plate for a first-place team while dealing with more scrutiny than any backup catcher should have to deal with in July.
The Dodgers have Rushing lined up to catch Ohtani’s own start against the Padres Friday. The same Ohtani he had the public dust-up with. Think about how that decision gets made. Roberts doesn’t just throw that assignment out there to make a point. Ohtani doesn’t quietly go along with it either if he’s still holding a grudge. That pairing happens because everybody in that building has decided the drama’s over and the baseball speaks for itself.
Zoom out for a second, because this matters way past one good week. The Dodgers are 56-31 with a 12-game lead in the NL West, the biggest cushion they’ve had all season. They’re running away with the division while chasing something no National League team has ever done, a three-peat. A team with that kind of target on its back cannot afford a black hole at catcher. For a minute there, with Smith out indefinitely and Rushing still finding his footing, that felt like a real risk.
Instead it’s turned into a non-issue, and that’s not nothing.
Dalton Wayne Rushing went 40th overall out of Louisville in 2022, the same draft pipeline that produced Will Smith himself. Funny how that keeps happening in this organization. He’s making a case that when Smith does come back, this catching room is going to be a strength instead of a question mark.
We spend so much time on the big four, Betts, Freeman, Ohtani, Yamamoto, because obviously, they’re the engine. But dynasties don’t run on four guys. They run on moments like this, when a young player gets thrown into the fire, gets burned a little bit in front of the whole sport, and comes right back out swinging as if nothing happened.
Smith gets his job back eventually. Nobody’s arguing that. But the Dodgers just found out they don’t have to hold their breath waiting on it.
Main Image: © William Navarro-Imagn Images</span
