Dodgers’ Dalton Rushing claps back at Jomboy Media: ‘Least of my worries’

When it comes to Dodgers catcher Dalton Rushing this year, there have been two common, almost certain occurrences.

One: That Rushing will lose his cool over a bad at-bat, a frustrating sequence behind the plate, or a contentious interaction with an opposing player.

Two: That Jomboy Media, the popular online baseball content factory, will clip such moments and spread them wide on the internet, contributing to Rushing’s new reputation as one of the bigger antagonists in the game.

On Tuesday, during an interview on AM570’s “Petros and Money,” Rushing called out that dynamic for the first time publicly.

While he said he is off of social media, and doesn’t “really care to see” the way his outbursts have repeatedly gone viral, he does “know Jomboy has made some money off me” with all the content of him they’ve posted.

“I will throw that out there,” Rushing said. “He gets a kick out of it for sure. But in all honesty, he’s the least of my worries.”

Jomboy Media was founded by a baseball fan named Jimmy O’Brien in 2017, starting as a small company producing lip-reading videos from MLB games that has now flourished into an influential and far-reaching outlet that even has a “strategic partnership” with the league itself.

This year, videos of Rushing have become one of their go-to content subjects.

Using footage from game broadcasts, they’ve published videos of him breaking bats in the dugout, jawing with opposing players and battling emotional outbursts that have dogged an otherwise strong season from the second-year backup catcher.

“I wouldn’t say I try to do it,” Rushing said of such moments. “I think it just kind of is a little second-nature, competitive side of the game. When the competitive juices start flowing, it’s kind of a like a third-person view. Your body takes over and you just play the game as hard as you possibly can.”

While Rushing and the Dodgers have both emphasized his need to control such tempers, they’ve also felt his portrayal online has unfairly caricatured his hot-headed persona.

After Rushing’s glaring and widely dissected breakdown with Shohei Ohtani last month, for instance, teammates came to the 25-year-old’s defense as he took ownership of the situation, with Freddie Freeman saying “we all love Dalton” and how he “just wish people could see the Dalton Rushing that’s not on TV, because he’s awesome.”

Another example came Monday night, when Rushing was involved in a benches-clearing incident before later hitting a walk-off single in extra innings. 

During the former sequence –– which was triggered by a confrontation between Rushing and Cole Carrigg of the Colorado Rockies after they had collided on a tag play at the plate –– the Jomboy-run podcast “Talkin’ Baseball” posted from its X account: “You guys won’t believe who’s involved in another controversy.”

Then, when Rushing ended the game an inning later with his second walk-off in the last couple weeks, the Dodgers’ official X account seemed to clap back at the media company, posting: “You guys won’t believe who’s involved in another walk-off.”

For Rushing’s part, he has repeatedly downplayed the significance of his social media infamy. He has said multiple times this season it’s simply part of being a big-leaguer and all the more reason to keep his emotions in check.

But clearly, he knows how the internet (and Jomboy specifically) has latched onto his on-field antics.

As for his radio interview about Jomboy? They clipped that and pushed it out on social media, too.