The Dodgers announced this evening that they’ve placed catcher Will Smith on the 10-day injured list, retroactive to September 10, due to a right hand contusion. Catcher Chuckie Robinson was recalled to replace Smith on the active roster.
Smith, 30, has enjoyed a career year with the Dodgers this season as he’s hit .296/404/.497 and landed his third consecutive All-Star appearance. Unfortunately, he was struck by a foul ball on his throwing hand on September 3. He sat out for nearly a week before he returned on September 9, but he hasn’t appeared in a game since. Manager Dave Roberts had previously described the issue as a matter of pain tolerance for Smith, as his ailing hand won’t heal before the end of the year at this point.
That seemed to suggest that Smith and the Dodgers were ready to have him play through the injury while talking days off when possible, but Roberts today told reporters (including Sonja Chen of MLB.com) that “not enough improvement” has occurred in Smith’s ability to play at this point to continue giving him a spot on the roster and playing without a true backup catcher. Dalton Rushing is already on the injured list due to a shin contusion, which meant that third-string catcher Ben Rortvedt was the only option on the roster who was available in recent days.
Now that Smith has been placed on the shelf, there was room to get Rortvedt some help in the form of Robinson. Robinson has just 51 games in the big leagues to his name, and in that time has hit just .132/.170/.194 with a career wRC+ of -3, meaning he’s 103% worse than a league average hitter. It’s hardly a robust offensive profile, but he’s a very well-regarded defender and his right-handed bat could pair with Rortvedt’s lefty bat to form something of a platoon behind the plate, though neither player is offering much with the bat from either side of the plate.
Solid as Robinson and Rortvedt are defensively, it goes without saying that another week without Smith is a major blow to the Dodgers. He’s arguably been second only to Shohei Ohtani as the team’s most important player this year, and without him impacting the club on both sides of the ball everyday it’s been difficult for the Dodgers to lock up the NL West this September even while the Padres have gone 6-12 over their last 18 games. Surely, L.A.’s lead would be much larger than 2.5 games at this point if they had Smith in the middle of the lineup alongside Ohtani and Freddie Freeman.
That makes losing Smith for at least another week a tough pill to swallow, but at this point the Dodgers seem to view it as a necessary sacrifice in order to get Smith as healthy as possible in time for the start of the postseason. The Dodgers have just a 6.8% chance of clinching a bye through the Wild Card series according to Fangraphs, which means that Smith won’t get a substantial break between the regular season and the postseason to rest. The remaining regular season games are far less important than that three-game Wild Card set coming up in October, so it’s understandable that the Dodgers would be prioritizing getting Smith ready for that series at all costs at this point.
Given the nagging, day-to-day nature of Smith’s injury, it wouldn’t be a shock to see him activated after a minimum stay on the injured list. With that being said, it’s possible the Dodgers will want to give him as much time to heal up as possible over the final two weeks of the regular season, so perhaps they’ll take a more careful route with him and wait to bring him back until it’s time for him to tune up ahead of the postseason.