Our catching is (mostly) fine

Undeniably, the best catcher that we have is Will Smith. His framing, pitch-calling, etc. is elite, and he has proven that. But also—he's 31 years old, doing this for his 8th season. So comparisons to him to the catchers we have right now are somewhat disingenuous. But as he's injured, let's see what we have to work with.

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Rushing is just in his 2nd year in the major leagues but because of Smith's injury and clearly the desire to develop him, he's been getting much more playing time. He's already equaled his plate appearances from the 2025 seasons, and offensively he's slightly better than Smith. He's been slumping lately but it feels on par with the slumps of the other players. Regarding his catching though, yes he's worse than Smith but not really by that much. You compare their stats in Baseball Savant or Baseball Reference or Fangraphs and it's not an egregious gap between them.

I do think though that Rushing makes more high-profile mistakes and he's encountering these much more often due to the more frequent playing time he's having. But lately his catching misplays have come from when he's catching for Ohtani. Here's the thing though: we don't see Rushing having problems with catching for the other pitchers. For example, just a few games ago, Vesia credited Rushing with getting himself back into the game when he got into a jam in that game with the Rays. So what's Rushing's issue when catching for Ohtani. Well, Ohtani has a bajillion pitches so it's harder to call for him. Ohtani also has command issues right now whilst also being the starter with the most massive range in velocity, so it's just really difficult to block his pitches and gauge if his pitches are actually clipping the strike zone. Most importantly, however, is that Ohtani is just *different*. He is the GOAT who has the highest expectations for himself and he's pitching like it's his last season and he wants that Cy Young. Ohtani is very often mad while pitching, considering how much he curses while doing it. The other pitchers are calm overall. Such long experience + a strong determination would easily clash with Rushing's youth and personality whereas the other pitchers would easily defer to him. Ohtani's been in the big leagues for 9 years. Lauer is just behind him but he's new to the team. The rest of the starters have been in the leagues for just 2-3 years. Additionally, Rushing only gets really caught up with Ohtani in one inning a game. Before and after that they're fine.

Overall, I think the conclusion is just the popular one: Rushing needs a paradigm shift or a change in personality, which is not really something you can get by having him play a lot. What he needs is a mentor and perhaps some therapy. If he can get it together, calm down, and know when he's out-experienced, he can become the next Will Smith—maybe even better considering his bat. So like I really don't believe in booting him out or trading him, he's not bad to justify that. Just a bit rough around the edges.

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The concerning thing is we really don't have catcher depth though because our third catcher is Chuckie Robinson. After the debacle last game many have suggested that Robinson catch for Ohtani. Now, I would say that Robinson is experienced defensively as a catcher, but he's offensively terrible. His hits in his last game came from a pitcher who just got DFA'd. His hitting is so bad he immediately shows bunt whenever there's someone on base and less than 2 outs. Like, obviously the Dodgers can work around his offense, but if it's a close game do you want Rushing or Robinson batting? So I wouldn't mind if the Dodgers did explore more prospects for catchers.