Fever Report No. 028 · 2026-09-25
The Clock on Will Smith
Two calls on the same catcher. One miss already on the ledger. Thirty-four days on the official window, two on the real one — and the gap is closing.
The clock
Thirty-four days on the official window. Two days on the real one.
Call C0019 was filed September 8 with a 52-day clock running to October 29. But the regular season ends Sunday, September 27, and a number that cannot move after the last game gets graded at the last game. So the clock everyone sees says 34 days. The clock that matters says two.
Here is where it stands: Smith's actual value on contact has moved +0.0309 from the filing baseline of 0.3154. The call needed +0.020. The gap is already closed. The question is whether it stays closed through Sunday.
This is the second call we have filed on Smith. The first one, C0009, missed. We said his results on contact would climb at least 25 points over a summer baseline by September 3. They did not. They moved the wrong direction — minus 0.0093. We took the miss, and it stayed on the record, because that is the rule.
Now the engine filed again, and this time the number is moving.
The person
Will Smith grew up in Louisville's Douglass Hills neighborhood, playing St. Matthews Little League with his father Mark as coach. He was a Red Sox kid — Jason Varitek, Kevin Youkilis, David Ortiz — which is a funny detail for a catcher from Kentucky, except it is not funny at all. You watch who you love, and you become what you watch.
As a seventh-grader pitching varsity for Kentucky Country Day, Smith got rocked in a game at Danville. He was tipping his pitches badly. He showed no emotion on the mound — no frustration, no panic — and after the game the opposing coach told his coach what they were reading, so he could fix it. The lesson stuck. Teammates and coaches have described him as quiet and reserved yet highly competitive. Same kid who showed nothing in Danville, same demeanor now.
He converted to catcher at the University of Louisville, hit .382 with seven home runs as a junior, and the Dodgers took him 32nd overall in 2016. Then they asked the contact-oriented college hitter to tear down everything — new stance, new load, a leg kick, a different bat path. He bought in. He struggled early in the minors, and he kept going. One hundred thirty-eight major-league home runs later, he is the offensive catcher who earns a lineup spot for a decade.
He and his wife Cara co-founded the Catching Hope Foundation in 2021, working on literacy and leadership programs for underserved youth in Los Angeles. Their daughters Charlotte and Layton were born in 2022 and after. He is 31.
The signal
Smith's EV95 is 105.4 — right at the league median of 105.7. That is not a star's exit velocity. What matters is what sits underneath: his results on contact run 0.0776 below what his contact quality supports, which puts him in the 99th percentile of hitters whose stat line trails their bat. He ranks No. 11 of 20 on the breakout board. The engine's word for this is owed.
The last 14 days are the gap starting to pay: .313 with a 1.092 OPS, three home runs, seven walks against five strikeouts. Ten hits in 32 at-bats. The wire says he homered against the Padres in a 7-0 Dodgers win, his third home run in three straight starts. The chatter says he has been out of the lineup for a key game, and that some fans think the Dodgers would move on from him for another catcher. Both can be true. A catcher who plays 71 games by late September is a catcher who gets rested, and a .250 average in a contract-era sport invites second-guessing. The engine does not second-guess. It says the bat has been louder than the line all year, and the line is catching up.
The market
Smith's 2025 Topps Now World Series card — PSA 10 — sits at $55.22, up from $53.40 in late July. His 2019 Topps Update rookie, PSA 10, is flat at $44.00. Neither has moved much. The market is watching the .250 average, not the contact quality. That is the lag this site exists to measure.
Paid link — as an eBay Partner, FVR earns from qualifying purchases. Not financial advice. We take positions only after publication — never before. Misses stay on the record.
On the record
Call C0019 is in the money. It stays open until the window closes, because that is what we said we would do. The season ends September 27, and that is when the number freezes.
What proves us wrong: Smith's actual value on contact falls back below 0.3354 — the target — by the last game of the regular season, September 27. If it does, we take our second miss on the same player, and both stay on the record. If it does not, the ledger says HIT.
We'll know Sunday.
Biographical details per Wikipedia and MLB.com. All performance data: MLB StatsAPI via the FVR engine.