Cody Snavely
As we draw closer to the New Year, the Los Angeles Dodgers still have plenty of unanswered questions heading into the 2025 Major League Baseball season.
While the Dodgers’ main goal right now is to finalize their 26-man roster, with a reunion with fan-favorite Teoscar Hernández atop their wish list, one of the more pressing issues is what to do with top minor league prospect Dalton Rushing.
Rushing, 23, was the 40th overall pick in the 2022 Major League Baseball Player Draft taken by the Los Angeles Dodgers out of the University of Louisville, where current Dodgers catcher Will Smith attended from 2014 to 2016.
During his time at the collegiate level, the backstop had a career slash line of .298/.442/.630, which was capped off by hitting .310/.470/.686 with sixteen doubles, twenty-three home runs, and sixty-two RBIs in his junior year before the draft.
However, despite having an offensive first approach, Rushing was no slouch behind the dish, posting a .990 fielding percentage in his three college seasons. His overall play led to Rushing being honored with the ABCA All-American Third Team and ranking in the top fifty of Baseball America’s draft list.
Rushing would join a Dodgers organization with plenty of catching depth. At the Major League level, they had veteran catcher Austin Barnes and all-star Will Smith behind the plate. In the minor league pipeline, the Dodgers also had Diego Cartaya, Hunter Feduccia, and Thayron Liranzo.
However, Cartaya has hit a development halt, and the Dodgers shipped Liranzo to the Detroit Tigers in the Jack Flaherty trade. Since Feduccia is already on the 40-man roster, this leaves just Feduccia as the go-to backup option if anything happens to Barnes or Smith.
Rushing has lived up to the hype in just two short years. Since being drafted by the Dodgers in 2022, Rushing has put together a .273/.410/.520 slash line, along with a .930 OPS in three seasons.
This past season, Rushing continued to grow as a hitter, inevitably getting the promotion from Double-A Tulsa to Triple-A OKC, where the Dodgers, who value versatility, played rushing in left field.
Overall, Rushing hit .271/.384/.512 with a .896 OPS (.907 OPS in Triple-A), twenty-one doubles, and twenty-six home runs, which was the second most by a minor league catcher. Rushing’s success did not go unnoticed by his peers being voted to the 2024 All Prospect Second Team at catcher.
Rushing ended the year as the Los Angeles Dodgers’ number-one-ranked prospect (36th overall) and will presumably enter the 2025 season in that same position. But what is cloudy is what the Dodgers’ plans are for him.
According to Los Angeles Dodgers General Manager Brandon Gomes, Rushing will start primarily at catcher, and I’d assume he will start in Triple-A rather than Double-A like this past season.
While Rushing could be called up at some point this season, it will be tough as with the Dodgers exercising Barnes’s $3.5 million club option for the 2025 season, the Dodgers will run it back with Will Smith and Barnes behind the plate again in 2025.
The Dodgers could go with three catchers on their roster at some point, as they did during the 2019 regular season, with Barnes, Smith, and veteran catcher Russell Martin on the roster. However, it would be difficult to find regular at-bats for all three with no designated hitter spot available, but they made it work before.
Another option is to continue their plan from last season to convert Rushing into an outfielder, especially with talks between Teoscar Hernández and the Dodgers reportedly at an impasse.
In his minor league career, Rushing has primarily played catcher, collecting over nine hundred innings behind the plate. However, the 23-year-old prospect has spent time at first base (236.0 innings) and left field (.278.1 innings) and posted a respectable .978 fielding percentage, below Teo’s .981 in left this past season.
If the Dodgers plan to keep Rushing as a catcher, they could keep him in the minor leagues for one more season so he can fully develop his catching abilities. When the 2026 season rolls around, they could have him compete for a spot on the roster to backup Will Smith.
The final option would be to trade the top prospect for a position of need. The idea is not that far-fetched because the Dodgers have a history of trading minor league catchers for Major League Ready talent, such as including Connor Wong in the Mookie Betts trade, Keibert Ruiz in the Trea Turner/Max Scherzer trade, and the already mentioned deal of Thayron Liranzo for Jack Flaherty in 2024.
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