Broken rib? Bad habits? Dodgers look for answers to Will Smith’s second-half woes

It was impossible to tell at the time, but Dodgers catcher Will Smith played his best this season when his body was at its worst.

That huge month he had in May when he batted .318 with nearly twice as many RBIs as strikeouts? Or was it the consistent performance in June and early July that saw him make his first career All-Star while playing more than ever before?

It turns out he was doing this with a broken rib and an oblique sprain that occurred when he was knocked off the field on April 30th. He first spoke to AM570 about the injuries last week.

“I felt it for about three or four weeks,” Smith said. “It was pretty painful.”

It was only recently, however, that the injury began to impact the catcher’s performance, with the Dodgers citing its lingering effects as one of several factors in his second-half exit.

Read more: How the Dodgers’ Will Smith became one of the best catchers in baseball

Before the All-Star break, Smith had a .279 batting average, 13 home runs and 46 RBIs, an on-base plus slugging percentage of .889, ranking third on the team and one of five qualifiers. Major leaguers have more walks (44) than strikeouts (39).

Since then, its production has declined. In his last 54 games entering Friday, Smith is batting just .244 with five home runs and 26 RBIs. His OPS over that period was .702, which is below league average. He also doesn’t get on base very often, with just 18 walks and 46 hits.

Now, with the playoffs just weeks away, both he and the Dodgers are trying to rediscover the form that made him a dominant middle-order threat earlier this season.

They remain confident that the 28-year-old slugger will bounce back offensively before October arrives.

But they still don’t have enough time to try to correct the mistake of one of their most important players.

“It hasn’t been great the last couple of months,” manager Dave Roberts admitted this week. “He moved a little to the side.”

Standing outside his locker room on Thursday, Smith did his best to explain the issues that had hampered his performance.

Smith said that instead of his typical smooth and compact inside-out swing, his bat trajectory was too “outside” and “inside,” resulting in more whiffs and misses on pitches he used to pitch.

He said his front end is too open, causing him to cut the ball instead of driving it with a light push.

And in an effort to turn things around, he’s spent extra time working on his mechanics lately, using dozens of moves in early practice sessions with hitting coaches Aaron Bates and Robert Van Scoyoc, as well as a few swings in an afternoon simulated game. against live pitching earlier this week.

“There are days when it feels close, and there are days when it feels terrible,” Smith said. “But this is baseball.”

Read more: If this is Clayton Kershaw’s last shot with the Dodgers, he’s okay with it.

Although he initially played well following a rib injury that occurred just days after he returned from a concussion he suffered early in the season due to a ball that hit him in the mask, the Dodgers believe Smith’s pain gradually caused some unintentional bad habits. develop in your own way.

The problems he mentioned with the front side are in the same area of ​​his body where he fractured a rib, which occurred on a 90 mph sinker off St. Louis Cardinals right-hander Jake Woodford.

And while his numbers didn’t start to drop until he started feeling better, it took much longer to reverse some of the mechanical changes that were hampering him at the plate.

“He’s a competitor, so he’ll never say he’s hurt,” Bates said. “But basically he was just playing and it wasn’t doing him any good.”

Roberts added: “There was probably a bit of protection initially after the injury. And then when you talk about the edge, the slope and things like that fit into some modified mechanics.”

There were other factors contributing to Smith’s difficulties.

While the fifth-year defender played down the impact of his increased workload this season – he started 100 of the 139 games he was available for at a career-high pace – Van Scoyoc admitted that typical fatigue had taken its toll. .

“He dealt with being a little sore and tired,” Van Scoyoc said.

Bates also noted that because catchers spend so much time squatting behind the plate, the team tried to prevent Smith’s body from becoming too physically relaxed by putting him through strength training designed to maintain the muscle tension that generates much of his power.

“It all kind of works,” Bates said. “They slowly complement each other.”

At this point, neither issue has caused the club to worry about Smith’s ability to contribute in the postseason.

Read more: Hernandez: Will Smith be vanilla too? Dodgers doesn’t care because he’s on his way to superstardom.

Despite posting a season-worst .193 batting average in September, Smith believes he’s been “hitting the ball pretty hard” the last three weeks, but it hasn’t affected his results.

“There are still some swings and misses, but the balls I hit hard went straight to the guys,” he said. “We probably wouldn’t be having this conversation if some of them had fallen.”

Bates said the team also identified the differences between Smith’s hitting before and after the broken rib, helping him “break it down one step at a time” as he tries to rebuild the fundamentals that made him one of the best hitters in the sport.

“He’ll be fine,” Bates said. “He’s such a good player, he finds ways to get things done even when he’s not feeling his best.”

However, the calendar won’t wait for Smith to completely get things in order.

It may have taken some time for the full implications of the rib injury to become clear. But the Dodgers, already short on pitching and relying heavily on stars Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts to lead the offense, can ill afford to enter October with Smith targeting a slump.

“It’s just part of the season and you have to accept it,” Van Scoyoc said. “We’re just trying to get him back to a better version.”

Sign up for more Dodgers coverage with the Dodgers Dugout. Delivered at the beginning of each episode.

This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.