The Dodgers have turned an odd piece of hitting technology into a catcher’s classroom for Dalton Rushing, using the Trajekt Arc machine and pitcher Justin Wrobleski to help him read the strike zone and decide when to challenge called pitches. The work is already paying off in small but real ways: Rushing later won two challenges in Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s start on Sunday, and both turned the at-bats into strikeouts.
Rushing had been below average in challenges to called pitches this season, which is why the Dodgers started feeding him simulated deliveries instead of waiting for game situations to teach the lesson. The Trajekt Arc can replicate release points and deliveries while showing pitch characteristics, and each rep lets Rushing see how he caught it, where the pitch was and whether he should fight the call.
For Rushing, the process still feels unnatural. “It’s weird, because you don’t see the ball the whole way,” he said, adding that “it’s not like an actual pitcher, obviously, on the mound.” He also called the catching side “a little weird,” though he said the machine is giving him “an idea to train our eyes a little bit.”
That awkwardness is part of the point. The Dodgers are one of only a few teams using the technology, and they are adapting it for a job it was not built for in the first place. The machine has long been used to help hitters prepare for opposing pitchers, but using it with a catcher to sharpen pitch-challenge decisions is a different test, and one that still has some kinks to work out.
The broader backdrop is a Dodgers staff that has leaned on structure all season. The club has used a six-man rotation, weathered the losses of Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow and still carried one of the top pitching staffs in the majors, with the second-best record in all of baseball. Pitching coach Mark Prior said the extra day keeps Shohei Ohtani, Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki on routines they know, while also avoiding overtaxing younger arms early. Emmet Sheehan put it more simply: “Six days rest is awesome.”
That rotation has helped Los Angeles average 5.71 innings per start, best in the majors, a sharp turnaround from finishing 28th in innings per start last year. The club wants that usage pattern to keep the staff healthy into October, and the Rushing project fits the same idea: find a small edge now, before the games get heavier. What remains unanswered is how much the Trajekt Arc work will change his challenge rate over a longer stretch, but Sunday gave the Dodgers a useful sign that the experiment can carry over when it counts.
