The Los Angeles Dodgers, at one point, had a weakness. Not a glaring one, and not one that was going to single-handedly derail their World Series hopes, but a weakness nonetheless. As of July 26, their catchers had combined for a ghastly 69 wRC+. Even considering the skid catcher offense has experienced in recent seasons, that’s a bad number, ranking 24th in baseball at the time. Because they were worth the sixth-best defensive rating in baseball, they sat firmly in the middle of the pack at 1.1 WAR. But their performance still represented a hole in a lineup that was otherwise loaded. The Dodgers could have attempted to trade for a catcher, but the market lacked an obvious J.T. Realmuto-esque candidate, with James McCann standing as seemingly the best option. Instead, the Dodgers promoted Will Smith from Triple-A. Smith, 24, had played in just nine big league games before being called up. A month later, he might be the best offensive catcher in baseball.

That sounds jarring until you look at his numbers. In 102 plate appearances, Smith is hitting .318/.392/.818 with 12 homers and a 197 wRC+. In just 28 games, he already leads all catchers in offensive runs above average (Off). That is a counting stat.

In a fraction of the time any other catcher has had in the majors, Smith has surpassed the field in total offensive production. The catcher position is notoriously shallow in terms of hitting talent across the majors, but the best of the bunch is still an impressive group. Sánchez is a barrels machine, Realmuto is the best overall catcher in the game, and Yasmani Grandal and Willson Contreras are both incredibly talented players. And yet, Smith has generated more value at the plate than any of them, in nowhere near their number of plate appearances.

That production has boosted a Dodgers lineup that almost certainly could have survived without the added help, but has gotten it anyway. The team entered the 2019 season with veterans Austin Barnes and Russell Martin plugged into the catching position. Barnes, 29, had a breakout season in 2017 when he put together a 142 wRC+ in 102 games while playing excellent defense, but his offense cratered in 2018 when he produced just a 78 wRC+. Martin, meanwhile, was acquired from Toronto in the offseason before playing the last year of a 5-year, $82-million contract he signed after the 2014 season. This season, both Barnes and Martin have experienced career-worst seasons at the plate, paving the way for the organization to promote Smith, who ranked as the 80th-best prospect in baseball on Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel’s preseason Top 100 list. In less than a month, Smith has rocketed Los Angeles from 24th to 10th in catcher wRC+, and from 15th to 8th in catcher WAR.

Smith, of course, could always hit some. A first round selection (No. 32 overall) by the Dodgers out of Louisville in 2016, he did modestly well at the plate over his first two seasons of pro ball, largely boosted by good walk rates of well over 10%. He showed power for the first time in a 72-game stint with Rancho Cucamonga in the hitter-friendly California League in 2017, boosting his ISO from .103 in the previous season to .216. He continued to add power at the Double-A level in 2018, again raising his ISO to .268 while maintaining a steady walk rate over 11%, but he struggled mightily after a promotion to Triple-A, finishing 25 games with a wRC+ of 8.

He was called up for the first time on May 28, though only briefly. He played six games over the next week or so, and hit a pair of homers while slashing .286/.348/619. His first career home run was a walk-off against the Phillies.

He was sent back to the minors with an OPS of .967. It hasn’t been that low since. He came back to the majors for three games at the end of the month and homered again, this time in a pinch hit spot. It was another walk-off.

Smith went on the injured list because of an oblique on June 26, and remained in Triple-A Oklahoma City until the Dodgers brought him back in late July; if his play is any indication, it seems unlikely he’ll return to the minors anytime soon. In Smith’s first game back in the majors on July 27, he went 3-for-3 with a homer and two doubles, driving in six runs. He hasn’t slowed down since then, hitting safely in 16 of the 19 games he’s played since his last call-up, with a total of 16 extra-base hits. His .548 ISO in that span is first in the majors, while his 216 wRC+ is third and his 1.5 WAR is seventh.

You might skeptical of how sustainable his numbers are, and after just 28 games, you’d be right to be. Smith likely isn’t a true talent 197 wRC+ hitter, nor is he going to keep up a nearly 12-WAR pace over a full season. But there’s evidence to support the notion that he’s a top-tier catcher bat. With 64 batted ball events under his belt, his barrel rate is 9.8%. For reference, Peter Alonso’s barrel rate is 9.9%, and those rates tend to stabilize faster than others. He also has an xSLG of .558 — well below his absurd current figure, but still an indication that his power numbers aren’t a total mirage, even if his average home run distance of 396 feet doesn’t quite match up with the very best of the best.

It’s great news for the Dodgers that they have a sweet-swinging catcher on their roster now, but does that mean he’s a step below the others on defense? Not necessarily. In 28 games behind the plate, he’s accumulated 3.0 defensive runs saved. That doesn’t place much of a gap between him and Barnes (9.5 defensive runs saved in 70 games) or Martin (7.6 in 68 games). He hasn’t played nearly enough games for his defensive metrics to stabilize enough to be trustworthy, but the fact that the early returns seem to be so positive can only be a good sign for his presence behind the plate.

Smith is likely going to regress, be it in the next couple of weeks or sometime next year. Fortunately, there’s so much space between his offensive numbers and the rest of the catching field that it will take a bit for the pack to catch up with him. He had solid hitting pedigree as a prospect, but I don’t know that anyone could have expected this. The juiced ball can take some shine off of any great power tear we’ve seen this season, rookie or not. But it isn’t as though every other backstop isn’t getting to swing at the same ball. Smith just happens to be hitting it better than anyone else. He’s the best hitting catcher in baseball right now. Finally, the hard-luck Dodgers get a break.

Aaron Bates has a dual role with the Dodgers. The 35-year-old former first baseman serves as the team’s assistant hitting coach, and he’s also the director of hitting for the minor leagues. Now in his fifth year with Los Angeles, he works in conjunction with big-league hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc, and hitting strategist Brant Brown.

A third-round pick out of North Carolina State by Boston in 2006, Bates played eight professional seasons — he logged 12 plate appearances with the Red Sox in 2009 — before joining the coaching ranks. His final swings came with the Dodgers in 2014, the same year he was asked to help tutor up-and-coming prospects such as Scott Schebler and Corey Seager. From there he served as a hitting coach in the Arizona, Midwest, and California leagues. In 2018, he became the assistant hitting coordinator for LA’s minor league system.

Bates sat down to talk hitting when the Dodgers visited Fenway Park in mid-July.

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David Laurila: How are hitters in the Dodgers’ system taught, and evaluated?

Aaron Bates: “Brownie and Robert are both unbelievable. They have a way of communicating with players that is simplistic, makes sense, and provides answers. They can say, ‘This is why you’re making outs,” or ‘This is why you’re doing that.’ When you can provides answers to a player, it’s a breath of fresh air for him.

“It’s extremely important to be upfront with the players. We let them know there are numbers we value, as far as them being promoted, and they’re not necessary your baseball-card numbers. It could be OPS, wRC+, and their walk and strikeout rates. We let them know it’s not solely based on their batting averages.

“We let them know what we consider a good at-bat. We’re process-oriented, so if you line out, don’t get mad, and if you get a bloop single, don’t get extra happy. Over the course of the season, what we want is for them to hit the ball hard. That, and to be process-oriented. Read the rest of this entry »

Jack Little may well become a big-league pitcher. Ditto a member of a big-league front office. Drafted in the fifth round this year out of Stanford University, the 21-year-old right-hander possesses the potential to do both. For now, he’s taking the mound for the Great Lakes Loons, the low-A affiliate of the Los Angeles Dodgers.

On Friday, I asked Little about the genesis of his low-three-quarter arm slot.

“That’s a good question, honestly,” replied the righty, who has a 2.05 ERA in 22 professional innings. “In high school I was more high three-quarters — a normal three-quarters slot — but then I kind of just naturally moved lower. It wasn’t intentional, I just did it.”

Success followed. Little began getting more swings-and-misses with his fastball, and unlike many pitchers who move to a lower slot, the movement wasn’t downward. “I started missing above barrels a lot more,” Little explained. “I became more deceptive, and while I’m not 98 [mph] — I’m only low 90s — it kind of gets on the hitter, and plays more up in the zone.”

His slider is his best secondary pitch, which didn’t used to be the case. Prior to moving into the closer role at Stanford in his sophomore season, Little’s changeup was his go-to off-speed. He subsequently became fastball-heavy, with his changeup in his back pocket, and his slider a reasonably reliable No. 2 option… this despite its being, as he now knows, markedly unrefined. Read the rest of this entry »

We have a sizable collection of players to talk about this week because the two of us have been busy wrapping up our summer looks at the 2020 Draft class over the last couple weeks. This equates to every prospect added to or moved on THE BOARD since the Trade Deadline.

Top 100 Changes
We had two players enter the 50 FV tier in Diamondbacks SS Geraldo Perdomo and Padres C Luis Campusano. Perdomo is in the “Advanced Baseball Skills” player bucket with players like Vidal Brujan, Brayan Rocchio and Xavier Edwards. He’s added visible power since first arriving in the States and had as many walks as strikeouts at Low-A before he was promoted to the Cal League, which has been Campusano’s stomping ground all summer. He’s still not a great catcher but he does have an impact arm, big power, and he’s a good enough athlete that we’re optimistic he’ll both catch and make the necessary adjustments to get to his power in games down the line.

We also moved a D-back and a Padre down in RHP Taylor Widener and 1B Tirso Ornelas. Widener has been very homer prone at Triple-A a year after leading the minors in K’s. His fastball has natural cut rather than ride and while we still like him as a rotation piece, there’s a chance he continues to be very susceptible to the long ball. Ornelas has dealt with injury and swing issues.

On Aristides Aquino
Aristides Aquino was a 50 FV on the 2017 Reds list; at the time, he was a traditional right field profile with big power undermined by the strikeout issues that would eventually cause his performance to tank so badly that he became a minor league free agent. A swing change visually similar to the one Justin Turner made before his breakout (Reds hitting coach Turner Ward comes from the Dodgers) is evident here, so we’re cautiously optimistic Aquino will be a productive role player, but we don’t think he’ll keep up a star’s pace. Read the rest of this entry »

Last Saturday night against the Padres in Los Angeles, five days past his 25th birthday, Walker Buehler authored the most dominant start of his young career. With a fastball that touched 99 mph and a slider and cutter that continually befuddled hitters, the Dodgers righty faced 31 batters, struck out 15 of them, walked none, and yielded just five hits. Only one of those hits was of consequence, namely Manuel Margot’s eighth-inning pinch-homer, which kept Buehler from throwing a complete-game shutout; he and the Dodgers had to settle for a 4-1 win. Even allowing for the fact that the Padres own the majors’ highest strikeout rate (26.0%) and weren’t fielding a modern day Murderer’s Row, Buehler’s performance was a thing to behold.

So, behold!

While the major league strikeout rate is again at an all-time high (22.8%), Buehler’s start was just the sixth of the season in which a pitcher struck out 15 batters. He’s the only pitcher with multiple 15-K games, as he whiffed 16 but allowed two solo homers (from among just three hits) against the Rockies on June 21; he didn’t need more than 111 pitches in either start. Here’s the complete set: Read the rest of this entry »

For major league pitchers, the end always feels depressingly close at hand. In a game increasingly dominated by power and velocity, losing a tick can be the difference between sneaking a fastball past someone and watching a home run trot. Throw in elbow injuries, blisters, and hitters obsessively watching video looking for any exploitable edge, and it’s a miracle that any pitchers can sustain success.

Clayton Kershaw is no exception to this pattern. He may be the greatest pitcher of the 21st century, but that doesn’t give him special immunity from velocity loss or a license to avoid injury. Gone are the days of Kershaw posting sub-2 ERAs regularly. That’s partially due to the changing offensive environment, to be sure, but it’s also a reflection of the fact that Kershaw is aging. His strikeout rate fell last year to the lowest rate since his rookie season, a pedestrian 23.9%. He made less than 30 starts for a third straight season. His fastball velocity declined 1.5 mph. Age comes for everyone, or so it seems.

When Kershaw returned from a season-opening IL stint, he did so with old-man wiles. His velocity was down another tick, now approaching 90 mph. As Ben Lindbergh ably chronicled, Kershaw’s plan was to stick with what worked in 2018 and survive on sliders and first-pitch strikes. He became perhaps the most extreme pitcher in baseball, piping in first strikes nearly three-quarters of the time and afterward departing the strike zone entirely. He accomplished that trick by throwing his fastball 61% of the time to open at-bats and only 33% of the time after that.

However, even these extreme changes couldn’t hide the fact that Kershaw was slipping. At roughly the midpoint of the season, July 1st, Kershaw was 36th in WAR among pitchers, sandwiched between Kyle Gibson and Sonny Gray. He was marginally better, 24th, by RA9-WAR, but even there, it was weird seeing Kershaw’s name next to Yonny Chirinos and Zach Eflin. Some of this came from a limited workload, but his 3.23 ERA and 3.76 FIP told the same story. It wasn’t just the ball, either: his 77 ERA- and 89 FIP- were his highest since his rookie year, and his 22.7% strikeout rate was down even from last year’s low level. Read the rest of this entry »

Walker Buehler is elite — he has a 3.08 ERA and a 3.11 FIP in 278 career innings — and his curveball is among the reasons why. The 25-year-old Los Angeles Dodgers right-hander can spin it with best of them.

It hasn’t always been the same curveball. Buehler changed his grip partway through last season, and made a good pitch even better. Why and how did he go about doing so? The Vanderbilt product explained just that, plus his curveball’s beginnings, when the Dodgers visited Fenway Park in mid-July.

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Walker Buehler on his curveball: “I started throwing a curveball when I was 10 years old. I learned it from a guy named Brad Bohannon, who is now the head coach at Alabama. He was a volunteer assistant at [the University of Kentucky] at the time. He was my first coach.

“We worked on it, worked on it, and for a long time I threw it the same way. Same grip. I never really changed much, not even in college, but then when I had Tommy John, I talked to Carson Fulmer, and to another kid we had [at Vanderbilt] named Hayden Stone, who had a really good spiked breaking ball that played more like a slider.

“I saw the surgery kind of as a fresh start. I thought, ‘You know what? I’m going to learn how to throw this spiked one; I think it will be a better pitch than the one I throw. Now that I’ve had a year off, I can work on it and try to get the feel for it.’ That’s what I did. I threw that one up until about halfway through last year. Then I started messing around with a traditional one, and went back to that. Read the rest of this entry »

When it was completed, the Tyler White deal didn’t rock many (if any) boats. It was a minor move: The Dodgers acquired White from the Astros in exchange for Andre Scrubb, a 2019 Rule 5 eligible right-handed pitcher who had most recently been throwing in Double-A.

White has been scuffling of late, but a quick look at his offensive performance from the previous two seasons makes clear why the Dodgers find the first baseman intriguing. White’s bat has been significantly above league-average at times, even if his defensive profile limits his overall value:

Read the rest of this entry »

Tonight, 21-year-old Dustin May is set to bring his flaming red hair to Dodger Stadium when he makes his major league debut against the Padres. Every prospect’s journey to the bigs is unique, but they start in similar places, on amateur fields, often under the watchful eye of scouts. May’s path is especially familiar to me; though I was far from the only person in the Dodgers organization involved, I was the scout who signed him.

The funny thing is, I wasn’t especially enamored with May the first time I saw him pitch. It was a little more than four years ago to the day, at the annual Texas Scouts Association showcase game on a characteristically hot July day in San Antonio. May pitched one of the later innings of the day; he worked in the upper-80s with his fastball and threw a sharp upper-70s slurve with good spin. While he pitched well against the high school competition he faced, his stuff didn’t stand out among a crowd of intriguing 2016 high school draft prospects that included players such as Forrest Whitley, Hudson Potts, and Kyle Muller.

Still, May’s prospect status continued to rise at a relatively quick pace following that initial outing. After a solid performance in two separate appearances during the fall of his senior year, he was planted firmly among the list of “must see early” players – a list commonly populated by projectable high schoolers who might make a jump during the springtime. May, who was an ultra-skinny 6-foot-6 with a quick arm, fit the bill well.

By time his senior spring rolled around, May’s velocity had crept up from where it was during my first look. Touching 94 and routinely working in the low-90s with life, he began to morph into a prospect who didn’t seem as far away as he had a few months before. To go along with the increased fastball velocity, the breaking ball, which had always spun well but often got sweepy and had slurvy shape to it, began to develop into more of a true slider.

As an area scout, my responsibility was to gather as much information as I could so the scouting department could make the best decisions possible when choosing among hundreds of options during the draft. It was no different with May. I spent the spring speaking with his coaches, teammates, and teachers, to the college coaches who had recruited him, and advisers who were assisting his family in the process. May was selected in the third round of the 2016 draft as a projectable high school righty with the makings of two pitches that projected to potentially be plus in the future. He was given a $997,500 signing bonus and went straight to work in the AZL.

Between then and now, May has thrown just over 400 innings in the minor leagues, showcasing advanced command and inducing groundballs at an above-average clip. He now works with a four-pitch mix, highlighted by a plus low-90s cutter he added last year. His sinker, which has averaged 95 mph and touched 99, would be among the hardest sinkers major league starters throw. His curveball would be among the highest average spin breaking balls of any major league starter as well. His changeup, still a work in progress, is thrown just over 8% of the time and flashes average.

Beyond being a part of May’s signing process, I also served as one of his coaches – first during Fall Instructional League in 2016, and then again at the end of the 2017 season in his brief but impressive stint in the Cal League. I vividly remember having a conversation with him during instructs after a two-inning outing. He was told to only throw fastballs and changeups during his second inning of work in order to gain reps throwing the changeup, which was developmentally behind his breaking ball. May threw a total of 24 pitches in his two innings – 12 fastballs, 12 changeups. After the outing, he was asked if he intentionally threw the exact same number of each pitch, and if he was aware he could have utilized his breaking ball in his first inning of work. His response was succinct. He explained that he didn’t know it was an exact 50-50 usage split, but that he’d known he could use the breaking ball and decided not to. When asked for his rationale, he said he knew he needed a changeup to get big league hitters out. The coaches who observed this discussion nodded in approval. It’s rare for a teenager to possess the sort of foresight and maturity present in May’s response, one that suggests not only an awareness of what the exercise is intended to achieve in the moment, but also of the purpose it is meant to serve years down the road. It was then that I fully realized that May’s mental makeup would be a strength as his professional career continued.

Coming into the 2019 season, Eric Longenhagen and Kiley McDaniel ranked May second in the Dodgers system and 21st overall, earning a 55 FV and a report that heralded him as a near-complete prospect, only missing a changeup to round out his arsenal. Their report on May detailed the strength of his curveball and his curls:

May’s flamboyant ginger curls and Bronson Arroyo-esque leg kick are maybe the third and fourth most visually captivating aspects of his on-mound presence once you’ve gotten a look at his stuff. His mid-90s fastball plays up due to great extension, and further incorporation of a running two-seamer has given May’s heater enough tail to miss bats in the strike zone. His vertically-breaking slider (May calls it a slider, but it has curveball shape) has one of the better spin rates in the minors and enough vertical depth to miss bats against both left and right-handed hitters. It’s May’s out pitch, but he also has a developing cutter and its movement is a great foil for his two-seamer. After trying several different changeup grips in 2017, it seems like May is still searching for a good cambio, but his fastball and breaking ball command should suffice against lefties for now.

In 79.1 innings in Double-A this year, May produced a 3.18 FIP, a 19.8% K-BB%, and a 50.5% ground-ball rate. He earned a promotion to Triple-A, an invite to the Futures Game in Cleveland, and a 60 FV, moving closer to fulfilling the promise that had Eric and Kiley describe him as, “what was once a prospect with mid-rotation upside has become one with mid-rotation likelihood.” May is now ranked as the No. 1 prospect in the Dodgers system and eighth overall in baseball on THE BOARD.

Now, after a trade deadline that saw Los Angeles decline to make a significant pitching acquisition, May is getting the call. He’s a young pitcher with a unique combination of a high floor and a high ceiling. There’s a strong likelihood that he is a mid-rotation starter – a plus athlete who throws four pitches for strikes and has never had a major arm injury – and the chance that he continues to refine his arsenal and becomes someone featured at or near the top of a major league rotation. He’ll likely contend for a playoff roster spot on the 2019 Dodgers team, and figures to be featured in the rotation beginning in 2020 and moving forward. His path to the bigs might be complete, but his journey is just beginning.

The 2019 trade deadline has passed and, with it, dozens of prospects have begun a new journey toward the major leagues with a different organization. We have all of the prospects who have been traded since the Nick Solak/Peter Fairbanks deal ranked below, with brief scouting snippets for each of them. Most of the deals these prospects were a part of were analyzed at length on this site. Those pieces can be found here, or by clicking the hyperlink in the “From” column below. We’ve moved all of the players below to their new orgs over on THE BOARD, so you can see where they rank among their new teammates; our farm rankings, which now update live, also reflect these changes, so you can see where teams’ systems stack up post-deadline. Thanks to the scouts, analysts, and executives who helped us compile notes on players we didn’t know about.
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