On Saturday, Los Angeles Dodgers catcher Will Smith revealed that he didn't make his Cactus League debut until Friday night because he had been dealing with an ongoing ankle problem. In fact, the injury has been bothering him for quite some time.

Smith said Saturday that he sprained his left ankle during a base slide in early June last year (during the Dodgers' three-game series against the Yankees in New York from June 7-9), resulting in a bone contusion. Although he didn't make the injury list and played the remainder of the season, his stats did dip in the second half of the season. Even after the offseason, he still felt some discomfort in his ankle at the beginning of spring training. After making his spring training debut on Friday with five rounds of squats, he said he was feeling good.

"You can try all kinds of treatments," Smith said, "but the only thing that really works is rest... We are further investigating why the injury has not healed. Sometimes it just takes time. "
Medical data shows that the full recovery cycle for bone contusion varies from weeks to months, depending on the severity.

Smith's ups and downs in 2024 are likely not entirely due to ankle problems. He got off to a hot start in the first 27 games of March/April, posting a batting percentage of 0.362 and an offensive index (OPS) of 0.946. This hot form kept his overall figures in the first half of the season good, despite a decline in production from May onwards.
After the All-Star Game, Smith's OPS dropped to 0.626. In the playoffs, where the Dodgers won their eighth championship in history, he played all 16 games as a starting catcher, but only hit eight hits (0.143 batting average) from 56 batting cards, three of which were home runs.

"I think he missed a lot of the balls last year that he should have hit," said head coach Dave Roberts, "and I do think the foot injury kind of prevented him from swinging. Now he's clearly in a better position. "
However, Smith himself did not think his ankle affected his striking or crouching performance. He said the injury was more about his ability to run.

Instead, Smith believes last year's performance had more to do with batting mechanics than health. He worked hard to revise his swing in the offseason, both reviewing the technical characteristics of his peak and adapting to his current physical condition.
"It's more about the technical details of the swing itself," Smith explains, "and there is no problem with the angle of the shot, but the lack of space in the hand makes it too close to the ball. These are very professional technical tweaks. "

The high-loss nature of the catcher's position may also be a factor. Smith set a career-high 117 starts in 2024 and is fifth in the major leagues with a total of 121, behind Cal Raleigh (135), Shea Langeliers (131), Logan O'Hoppe and Tyler Stephenson (127 each).

The Dodgers face an extravagant annoyance: their full-time designated strike is Shohei Ohtani. With Ohtani not involved in the defense, the team had to choose between "letting the other main players rest through DH" and "leaving the superstar out of the starting line".
That will change this year, and with Ohtani returning as a second-player, the Dodgers expect to need to schedule more rest for the superstar — at least early in the season. Ohtani plans to be ready for a major league-level pitching game in May.

"When he's rested, we're still going to be able to fill in with a lot of good players, whether it's Will Smith or other players who need to be on the bench," Roberts said, "but it's not clear if it's going to be before the start pitch or later... None of these details have yet to be determined. "

Most importantly, as Smith looks ahead to an even better 2025 season, he doesn't rule out that the 2024 slump may simply be due to the randomness that characterizes baseball.
"It's baseball if you play well, and it's baseball when you play badly," Smith said, "and it's all out of my control." "