TORONTO -- The early days of the baseball season are a prime time for the small-sample fallacy to take hold.
During the Dodgers' season-opening homestand, they plated just 23 runs across six games, sparking concerns about the state of their offense. But all it took was a weekend in Washington, D.C., for the bats to heat up, and the hits kept falling once the Dodgers made their first trip north of the border since becoming back-to-back champions last November.
Dalton Rushing led Los Angeles to a blowout 14-2 victory over the Blue Jays on Monday night, the first installment of this week's World Series rematch against Toronto at Rogers Centre. Rushing reached base in all five of his trips to the plate, slugging two home runs in his first career four-hit game.
Teoscar Hernández, Freddie Freeman and Shohei Ohtani also went deep in the series-opening rout.
The Dodgers have scored 45 runs through four games during their first road trip of the season (the most since the Phillies and Reds had 49 each in 1900), quelling those early fears about their offense. By and large, they were expected to have a productive series against the Nationals, who have been a last-place team in five of the past six seasons. The Blue Jays have already taken hits to their pitching depth, but they're still expected to pose a stronger challenge to L.A. over the course of the three-game set.
Rushing started on Monday because the Dodgers wanted Will Smith to catch Yoshinobu Yamamoto on Tuesday and Shohei Ohtani on Wednesday, all while getting Rushing into one game in the series against the Blue Jays. That gave the 25-year-old rare starts on back-to-back days, and he's made the most of that opportunity, also hitting his first homer of the season in Sunday's 8-6 comeback win at Nationals Park.
When Rushing made his big league debut on May 15 of last season, he was ranked by MLB Pipeline as the Dodgers' No. 1 prospect. While he hit at every level of the Minor Leagues, he struggled to adjust to his limited playing time behind Smith, slashing .204/.258/.324 through 53 games.
Rushing has only appeared in three of the Dodgers' first 10 games, so he hasn't gotten many more opportunities early in the season. But he spent the offseason adjusting the setup of his swing so that it was easier to get in his usual rhythm when he's not taking daily at-bats, and he's gotten results in the early going.