The Sox go outside the organization to cover for the injured Triston Casas.
Who is he and where did he come from?
He’s Dominic Smith, and he comes from Gardena, California, the capital of the Japanese diaspora in America. Gardena is not, however, the global capital of the Japanese diaspora. That would be Brazil, which is home to more people of Japanese descent than any country outside of Japan. In fact, the only reason that baseball exists in Brazil at all is that Japanese immigrants — not Americans or Venezuelans — brought it there. If you watched the Barry Larkin-managed Brazilian national baseball team in the 2013 World Baseball Classic, you would have noticed a plethora of Japanese names up and down the roster. This doesn’t have anything to do with Dom Smith, but isn’t it interesting?
What position does he play?
He’s split his time between first base (which is why he’s here) and left field.
Is he any good?
Hey, he once finished 13th in the NL MVP race and cracked the top 10 of all three slash categories (Avg. OBP, SLG) so he must be good, right?
Smith was a first-round pick out of high school by the Mets in 2013, and was a top-100 prospect for most of his time in the minors. It took a couple of years for things to click at the big league level, but in two seasons from 2019-2020, he was one of most productive offensive performers in the game. He played a total of 139 games over those two seasons, during which he slashed .299/.336/.571 while hitting 21 homers and putting up an OPS+ of 150. His 166 wRC+ was good for seventh in all of baseball in 2020, and as he was just 25 years old, it looked like he’d be a star for years to come.
Unfortunately, it’s all been downhill since then.
He entered the 2021 season as the Mets everyday left fielder and homered on Opening Day. No doubt many Mets fans celebrated with the ol’ “he’s on-pace for 162 homers!” joke. But while they probably didn’t really believe that 161 more of those were coming, they also probably thought there would be more than just 10. He finished with an OPS+ of just 83 in what was widely considered one of the most disappointing seasons in baseball that year,
Smith would later reveal that he played through a partially torn labrum for part of the 2021 season. But, nevertheless, the Mets added both Starling Marte and Mark Canha for 2022, and with Pete Alonso entrenched at first, this signaled a loss of playing time for Smith. Thus began another lost season for Dom, as he played in just 58 games and found himself constantly in the swirl of trade rumors. He finished the season without a single homer and a batting average below the Mendoza Line. It was quite the fall from grace.
He signed with the Nationals for 2023 and hoped for a bounce-back year. And while he played in a career-high 153 games and showed significant improvement at the plate, his bat still didn’t come close to matching the highs of 2020, as he finished with 12 homers and a .254/.326/.366 slash line.
There were some positives in DC last year, including the fact that Smith put up the best strikeout rate of his career — by far — while maintaining a respectable walk rate. The biggest issue that his power has disappeared. He simply doesn’t hit the ball hard anymore.
Show me a cool highlight.
Remember Smith’s nightmare 2022 season? Well, on May 1 of that year, he was on the verge of being DFA’d, as the Mets (and the rest of the Major League Baseball) were forced to trim temporarily COVID-expanded rosters. Smith responded by going 4-4 with 3 RBI that night. Robinson Cano was cut loose the next day instead.
What’s he doing in his picture up there?
Attempting his very first bear hands celebration thingee during last night’s win against the Giants! May there be many more bear hands celebration thingees in the weeks and months to come.
What’s his role on the 2024 Red Sox?
Dominic Smith is here only because Triston Casas isn’t. So, in other words, the timetable for Casas’s return likely mirrors the timetable of Dom Smith’s Red Sox tenure.