Dalton Rushing will represent Dodgers in the 2023 Futures Game

Dalton Rushing, the Dodgers’ top draft pick last year, will represent the team at the 2023 MLB Futures Game, which will be played on Saturday, July 8 at T-Mobile Park in Seattle.

Rushing will play for the National League in the Futures Game, with former Dodgers third baseman Adrián Beltré on the coaching staff as bench coach.

Rushing, drafted in the second round in 2022 with the 40th overall pick, is the lone Dodgers representative in the annual showcase of top prospects during All-Star week. He’s off to a great start this season, hitting .263/.438/.500 with 14 doubles, seven home runs, and 42 walks for High-A Great Lakes. Rushing’s 169 wRC+ is second-highest among Dodgers minor leaguers this season, trailing only Austin Gauthier, his former Loons teammate who was promoted to Double-A Tulsa in May.

With Great Lakes, Rushing has started 25 games at catcher, 12 times at designated hitter, and nine times at first base this season. He recently missed eight games on the injured list after getting hit flush in the helmet by a backswing while catching. Rushing returned to the Loons on Friday and played two games over the weekend, one game at DH and the other at first base.

Rushing made three top-100 prospect lists before the season — Baseball Prospectus, The Athletic, ESPN — which is usually a tall order for someone who was just drafted the previous July. In updated lists after the first few months of 2023, Rushing moved up and/or was added to a few lists, showing up at No. 45 at ESPN and 76th at Baseball America in late May, and on Sunday moved all the way up to No. 51 at MLB Pipeline.

Dating back to 2013, covering 11 Futures Games, Rushing will be the 19 Dodgers player to be invited to play in the midsummer event. He’s just the fifth player to do so with High-A as his highest level, along with Corey Seager and Julio Urías (2014), Yadier Álvarez (2017), and Diego Cartaya (2022).