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.
"Sadly, like I said on the field, it's only downhill from here," Rushing said with a chuckle. "But I'm gonna ride this wave as long as I possibly can."
Teoscar Hernández, Freddie Freeman and Shohei Ohtani also went deep in the series-opening rout. To quell those early fears about their offense, the Dodgers have scored 45 runs so far this road trip, the most runs a team has scored through its first four road games since 1900, when the Phillies and Reds both scored 49.
By and large, the Dodgers 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 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.
"I don't know if Dalton lacks confidence," Freeman said. "That's a beautiful asset. It really is. … To get results, it's so hard not to play every day, have timing, have your swing. "
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. Last year, Rushing started at catcher about twice a week, which is also the general plan for this season.
"I plan on giving Will ample rest. But make no mistake who our starting catcher is," manager Dave Roberts said. "I think this is a good year for Dalton to take a lot more at-bats, catch a lot more innings."
At the risk of stumbling into another small-sample fallacy, Rushing is 6-for-9 (.667) and tied with Ohtani, Freeman and Andy Pages for the team lead in home runs. But just because Rushing has taken so few at-bats doesn't mean that nothing meaningful can be taken away from his performance.
Rushing never had more than four hits or one home run in a three-game span last season. The adjustments he's made, physically and mentally, would seem to have had some effect, at least in these early days.
"Last year, mentally, I was in a tough spot playing the role that I was, and just kind of trying to figure out how you play that role," Rushing said. "And this year, I have a little better understanding.
"You're not going to show up and have a game like that tonight. You're not going to show up and get two hits every game, whether you're playing every day or you're playing every three days. … Maybe it was just a pill I had to swallow a little bit."
Rushing has no intention of being a backup catcher for his entire career, but he knows that mastering this role is the first step to becoming the player he wants to be.