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The Dodgers provided injury updates on both Will Smith and Dalton Rushing ahead of their game against the Brewers, per Fabian Ardaya at Yahoo Sports. Both catchers are dealing with health concerns that bear monitoring as the club pushes through the second half of the season.

Smith has been the Dodgers’ primary catcher since establishing himself as a cornerstone behind the plate during the 2020 postseason run. The former first-round pick out of Louisville has been one of the more productive offensive catchers in baseball over the past several seasons, combining switch-hitting power with an increasingly polished defensive game. Any time Smith’s name appears on an injury report, it gets our attention — he’s not easily replaced in this lineup. His bat from the catching position is one of those quiet competitive advantages we’ve leaned on for years, and losing him for any stretch would create a real hole in the middle of the order.

Rushing, meanwhile, represents the future behind the plate. The left-handed hitting catcher was the Dodgers’ first-round pick in the 2023 draft out of Louisville (yes, same program as Smith) and has moved through the system with the kind of tools that made him one of baseball’s top catching prospects. He got his first taste of the majors and has shown flashes of the bat-to-ball ability and power potential that made him such an appealing draft target. An injury to Rushing at this stage of his development is worth paying close attention to, both for what it means now and for the long-term trajectory.

The catching situation is one of those things that can quietly define a season. When you have Smith and Rushing both healthy and available, the depth behind the plate is legitimately elite. When either one is banged up, the margin gets thinner fast. I’ll be watching how this shakes out over the next few days — the Dodgers are in the middle of a Brewers series and can’t afford to be running on fumes at catcher. We should get a clearer picture of both players’ availability as the weekend progresses.

Source(s): Fabian Ardaya (Yahoo Sports) | First reported: August 15, 2026 3:52 AM UTC

God Bless and Go Dodgers