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ESPN’s Jeff Passan has a new trade deadline report on the Dodgers that directly contradicts the public messaging from manager Dave Roberts, per Dodgers Nation. Roberts had previously maintained that the team’s trade deadline plans would not be significantly altered by the injuries to Shohei Ohtani and Will Smith, but Passan’s reporting suggests a different reality behind the scenes in the Dodgers’ front office.

This is the kind of disconnect we see fairly often between what a manager says at the podium and what the front office is actually doing. Roberts’ job is partly to project confidence and stability — Andrew Friedman’s job is to evaluate the roster with cold eyes and act accordingly. If Passan is reporting a gap between those two messages, I’m inclined to trust the reporting. Passan is one of the most plugged-in reporters in baseball, and he doesn’t float things casually.

Ohtani has been dealing with a left knee issue that has kept him off the mound and led to recent bullpen sessions to test his readiness. The two-way star’s pitching absence is a significant hole in the rotation, one that the Dodgers were already reportedly looking to address — with names like Detroit’s Tarik Skubal surfacing as potential targets. If Passan’s report suggests the front office views the Ohtani situation as more serious than Roberts has let on publicly, it could accelerate the urgency to add an arm before the deadline.

Smith, meanwhile, was moved to the 60-day injured list earlier this month, and his return timeline remains unclear. Losing your starting catcher for an extended stretch changes the calculus. Austin Barnes was called up to fill the void, but Barnes is a backup-caliber option — not a long-term solution if Smith’s absence stretches deep into the second half or, worse, into October.

The bigger picture here is that the Dodgers’ front office has historically been aggressive at the deadline when they sense a championship window, and this year is no different. We have the talent to win it all, but the margin for error shrinks considerably without Ohtani on the mound and Smith behind the plate. If Friedman and the baseball operations group are privately more concerned than Roberts has indicated, we should expect the Dodgers to be among the most active teams over the next week or two.

I’d keep a close eye on this one. The gap between what a team says publicly and what it does at the deadline is often where the real story lives. Passan putting this out there means something is moving behind the scenes, and the Dodgers are clearly preparing for multiple scenarios — including ones where their injured stars aren’t back as soon as we’d all like.

Source(s): Jeff Passan (Dodgers Nation) | First reported: July 22, 2026 7:28 PM UTC

God Bless and Go Dodgers