Will Smith makes the roster but not Michael Conforto for Dodgers’ wild-card series
Despite missing the last three weeks of the season with a fracture in his right hand, catcher Will Smith was included on the Dodgers’ roster for their best-of-three wild card series against the Cincinnati Reds this week, the team announced ahead of Game 1 on Tuesday.
Smith was not in the starting lineup for Game 1, with Ben Rortvedt behind the plate for the series opener. However, manager Dave Roberts didn’t close the door on Smith being able to start later in the series, and said that the two-time All-Star would be available Tuesday to pinch-hit.
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“The hitting, the throwing, he feels really good about,” Roberts said. “I think it’s a day-to-day thing. And so I’m not closing the door that he’s not going to start tomorrow. But I do feel that the floor of having him available to hit in any big spot, it was certainly worth having him on the roster.”
The Dodgers also put a third catcher, rookie Dalton Rushing, on the wild-card roster.
“It got to a good place where the bone had healed,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said of Smith’s hand, which was originally injured in early September when it was hit by a foul ball, but wasn’t diagnosed as a fracture until a couple weeks later.
“Now it’s about getting strength back,” Friedman added. “Once you do that, then it’s about throwing. We were able to keep his legs going, but he hasn’t had that throwing volume in a little while. So now we have to continue to kind of progressively layer that on. But as far as him in the batter’s box, if there’s a big spot, we all felt really good about betting on Will.”
Max Muncy and Tommy Edman, who both missed time last week with minor injuries, were also on the roster, as expected.