Dodgers: Will Smith Talks About Front Office Altering His Swing Before Big League Call Up

When Dodgers catcher Will Smith was drafted in 2016, he was seen as a solid but unspectacular hitter. One site said, "Smith isn't going to match the sticks of fellow catchers Matt Thaiss or Zack Collins, but MLB.com's write-up called Smith 'one of the better all-around backstops available.'"

Smith, Thaiss, and Collins all debuted in the big leagues in 2019. Thaiss has a career OPS+ of 81, and Collins is at 72. Smith, meanwhile, has an OPS+ of 129 and has hit more than three times as many homers as the other two combined. So in a way, they were right — Smith hasn't matched them offensively at all.

Smith was on MLB Network on Monday, and he talked about his development as a hitter.

“It kind of started once the Dodgers drafted me. Got me in their player development. And they basically told me you need more power to play at the big leagues, consistently drive guys in, and I committed to it. They kind of taught me how, put a lot of hard work into it, just kind of learning how to actually really drive the ball up in the air. So, yeah, all that work is kind of paying off now.”

Obviously, it's not as easy as saying, "Hit for more power." As Smith says, there's a lot of hard work involved on his part. But the Dodgers deserve a ton of credit for identifying Smith as someone with the potential to make those improvements and the discipline to put in the necessary work, not to mention the dev team that knew how to teach it.

Smith might currently be the highest profile example of L.A.'s player development system, but he's far from the only one. James Outman was a non-prospect and is now has legitimate promise. On the pitching side, Tony Gonsolin was a ninth-round pick who turned into a Cy Young contender, and 2020 fifth-rounder Gavin Stone is on a similar trajectory.

There are a lot of reasons the Dodgers have been so successful over the past decade, and the player development system is a big one.