Steve Webb
LOS ANGELES, CA — Well, it’s March and you know what that means. Time once again for the DodgersBeat position-by-position preview series! I know you’re all thrilled about that. So for the next three weeks, we at DodgersBeat will be getting you all the information you’ll need for the upcoming 2024 campaign. It’s going to be an early start for the Dodgers this year, with games that count being played in Korea on March 20-21 at the ridiculous time of a 3:00 AM first pitch local time. Which means we need to get cracking on our preview stat. Since the pitching position is the most complicated, we’ll save that for the end. We’ll start with the 2 spot on the lineup card, the catching position, one that the Dodgers should be pretty much in a similar postion as last year. Here’s what we think we’ll happen behind the plate in 2024. This year, in addition to showing each player’s performance from 2023, we will also include the projected performances compiled by the statheads over at FANGRAPHS for 2024:
Will Smith (Five years MLB experience, all with LAD)
I’ve always like Will Smith behind the dish for the Dodgers. However, I must admit I don’t like him quite as much as I did a couple of years ago. Last year, it felt like he was struggling a bit at the plate, and not making the clutch contact that we’d come to expect from him. 2023 marked the third year in a row that Smith OPS had gone down. From a fantastic .860 in 2021, to a still good .807 in 2022, to a good, but not great .797 in 2023. Of course, most teams would absolutely die for that kind of production out of the catching position. But I went from thinking of Will Smith as the top catcher in the game, to just one of the best backstops in baseball. It’s not a huge drop in production, and Smith’s stint on the IL didn’t help matters much last season. However, I think he might be poised for a bit of a bounce back this year. After teams run the gauntlet of Betts, Freeman, Ohtani (in whatever order they end up), they might think of Smith digging into the batter’s box as a relief. Hopefully, he’ll have plenty of RBI chances with those heavy hitters preceding him in the lineup. Another thing that needs to get better, team-wide, is the Dodgers need to give Smith a chance to throw out a baserunner once in a while. The abysmal record of the Dodgers getting stolen on is something that really needs to get cleaned up if the Dodgers want to keep the go-go Diamondbacks in their proper place in the NL West.
| Season | Team | Level | G | PA | HR | AVG | OBP | SLG | wOBA | wRC+ | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | LAD | MLB | 126 | 554 | 19 | .261 | .359 | .438 | .345 | 119 | 4.4 |
| 2024 | FGDC | PROJ | 130 | 514 | 21 | .258 | .353 | .457 | .349 | 121 | 4.1 |
Austin Barnes (Nine years MLB experience, all with LAD)
If Will Smith is a lock to be the starting catcher for the Dodgers, it’s not such a sure thing to say that Austin Barnes will be Smith’s backup for the entirety of the season this year. Why? His attrocious 2023 campaign, where Barnesy put up career-low numbers in almost every offensive catergory. His -1.1 WAR is the only stat that you need to know. It was bad when he was in the lineup, like really bad. His ten hits in 96 at-bats before the All-Star break was enough to make every Dodger fan bang his head against the concession stand wall. However, there was some room for optimism in the second half of the season. After the ASB, the veteran put up decent numbers off the bench: a .268 batting average and a .706 OPS over the final few months of the season. That’ll play. Plus, there is Barnes’s solid work behind the plate that is not nothing. After, a certain Clayton Kershaw will be back on the mound before too long, and we all know who his favorite catcher is. So here’s hoping we can see late summer Austin Barnes all year long in 2024. Otherwise, look for the Dodgers to consider cutting him loose and giving one of the other options a try at the position.
| Season | Team | Level | G | PA | HR | AVG | OBP | SLG | wOBA | wRC+ | WAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | LAD | MLB | 59 | 200 | 2 | .180 | .256 | .242 | .229 | 41 | -0.8 |
| 2024 | FGDC | PROJ | 37 | 147 | 3 | .218 | .301 | .335 | .284 | 78 | 0.5 |
Other Options
Luckily, even if Barnes needs to be cut loose (and I hope he doesn’t) the Dodgers have a lot of depth at this position, including two highly touted prospects in camp in Arizona right now. Of course, Diego Cartaya will be a major league catcher at some point, the only question is when and where. The third-ranked prospect in the Dodgers organization didn’t have a fantastic year at double-A Tulsa last year, so it’s still a work in progress at the plate. I’d imagine he’s still a couple of years away from being big-league ready. Likewise, Dalton Rushing, the Dodgers’ first pick in the 2022 draft, took a little bit of a step back as he played in high-A last year. However, the Dodgers and MLB scouts are still very high on him so much so that they rank him above Cartaya now on the list of Dodgers’ prospects. However, I’d be a little surprised if either of these guys see big-league time this year. More likely, we’d see Hunter Feduccia serve as an emergency third option if Smith or Barnes has to hit the IL. 29-year-old Chris Okey is in camp as a non-roster invite this Spring, so he’d be around if the Dodgers had to break the glass and pull up someone from Oklahoma, but I’d imagine he isn’t a part of the calculations that the front office is making for this season.
Ideally, we get a good backup year out of Barnes and we can put off discussion of who is the second catcher until after the World Series parade in the fall. But if there is to be such a parade, Will Smith is going to have to be right in the middle of that.
DODGERSBEAT RATING: B+
