{"id":100389,"date":"2025-05-14T17:03:23","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T21:03:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=100389"},"modified":"2025-05-14T17:03:41","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T21:03:41","slug":"dodgers-call-up-dalton-rushing-dfa-austin-barnes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/05\/14\/dodgers-call-up-dalton-rushing-dfa-austin-barnes\/","title":{"rendered":"Dodgers Call Up Top Prospect Dalton Rushing, DFA Austin Barnes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Los Angeles Dodgers are making waves, calling up top prospect catcher <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/register\/player.fcgi?id=rushin000dal&amp;utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-05-14_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Dalton Rushing<\/a>. Perhaps more shocking, however, is they are designating catcher <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/b\/barneau01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-05-14_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Austin Barnes<\/a> for assignment. The team announced both moves on Wednesday afternoon.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">The Dodgers selected the contract of catcher Dalton Rushing and designated catcher Austin Barnes for assignment.<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Dodgers\/status\/1922737287445541187?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">May 14, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Dodgers Call Up Top Prospect Dalton Rushing<\/h2>\n<h3>Rushing to Judgement<\/h3>\n<p>Rushing is the 15th-ranked prospect in all of baseball (per <a  href=\"https:\/\/www.mlb.com\/milb\/prospects\/top100\/dalton-rushing-687221\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">MLB Pipeline<\/a>), and the top prospect in a deep Dodgers minor league system. He has been tearing the cover off the ball the last <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/03\/18\/dodgers-judgment-dalton-rushing\/\" target=\"_self\">two seasons down on the farm.<\/a> The 24-year-old catcher has a batting average of .308 and has five home runs and 17 runs batted in so far this season. Since the offensive stats could not be ignored, Rushing has spent time playing third base and left field, in hopes of a quicker major league debut. However, this season, the versatile star has been primarily a catcher.<\/p>\n<h3>Austin &#8220;Powers&#8221; Barnes<\/h3>\n<p>Until today, Austin Barnes was the longest-tenured position player on the roster. Out of Arizona State University, Barnes made his major league debut for the Dodgers in 2015. He has been very good at handling the pitching staff, and is popular with his teammates. Barnes has been <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/k\/kershcl01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-05-14_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Clayton Kershaw<\/a>&#8216;s personal catcher in recent years. However, he has struggled to throw out runners behind the plate. In addition, the veteran backstop has struggled at the plate, hitting for only a .214 average with a high strikeout rate and only one walk.<\/p>\n<h3>The Time is Now<\/h3>\n<p>The bottom of the Dodgers order has struggled to produce consistency with <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/e\/edmanto01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-05-14_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tommy Edman<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/h\/hernate01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-05-14_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Teoscar Hern\u00e1ndez<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/05\/06\/dodgers-teoscar-hernandez-james-outman\/\" target=\"_self\">on the injured list<\/a>. In addition, the left-handed bats of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/search\/search.fcgi?pid=muncyma01,muncyma02&amp;search=Max+Muncy&amp;utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-05-14_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Max Muncy<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/c\/confomi01.shtml?utm_medium=linker&amp;utm_source=lastwordonsports.com&amp;utm_campaign=2025-05-14_br\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Michael Conforto<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2025\/05\/13\/dodgers-patience-michael-conforto-being-tested\/\" target=\"_self\">have struggled mightily<\/a> thus far this season. It was apparent to the Dodgers that the lineup needed a shot of adrenaline.<\/p>\n<p>Whether Dalton Rushing can provide it is another question. Now, he has the chance to try.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Photo Credit: \u00a9 NATHAN J. FISH\/THE OKLAHOMAN \/ USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Los Angeles Dodgers are making waves, calling up top prospect catcher Dalton Rushing. Perhaps more shocking, however, is they are designating catcher Austin Barnes for assignment. The team announced both moves on Wednesday afternoon. The Dodgers selected the contract of catcher Dalton Rushing and designated catcher Austin Barnes for assignment. \u2014 Los Angeles Dodgers [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5226,"featured_media":100392,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33,926,1071,35],"tags":[2914,28402,2240,689,1198,3899],"class_list":["post-100389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dodgers","category-milb","category-mlb","category-news","tag-austin-barnes","tag-dalton-rushing","tag-max-muncy","tag-michael-conforto","tag-teoscar-hernandez","tag-tommy-edman"],"modified_by":"Lewis Masella, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5226"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100389"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100389\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100393,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100389\/revisions\/100393"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}