Notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Forrest Whitley, RHP, Houston Astros (Profile)
Level: Double-A   Age: 20   Org Rank: 7  FV: 60
Line: 4 IP, 2 H, 1 BB, 7 K, 0 R

Notes
This is the best pitching prospect in baseball, wielding ungodly stuff that spiked when he dropped about 60 pounds throughout his senior year of high school. He’s also on Driveline’s weighted-ball program. He’ll show your four plus or better pitches over the course of an outing. Whitley has yet to allow a run since returning from suspension. The suspension might be a blessing in disguise for Houston, who could now conceivably weave him into their playoff plans without fear of overworking Whitley’s innings count.

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Recently, I wrote an article about the very surprising Max Muncy. That was published on June 4, which is only about a week and a half ago. The way this tends to work, we write articles about players when we can’t ignore their hot streaks anymore, and then, invariably, regression sets in. Not so, in this case. At least, not yet. Since June 4, Muncy has batted 31 times. He has eight walks and ten hits, four of which have left the yard. Muncy has actually gone deep four games in a row.

Muncy didn’t even figure into our preseason Dodgers depth chart. I doubt the Dodgers were thinking too much about him, either. Muncy was projected by both Steamer and ZiPS as a below-replacement player. Well, he’s come to the plate 157 times, and out of everyone with 150 plate appearances, Muncy ranks third in baseball in wRC+, behind only Mookie Betts and Mike Trout. The picture, according to expected wOBA, is only a little bit different — within the same player pool, Muncy ranks fifth, between Freddie Freeman and Joey Votto. The numbers are spectacular, and the size of the sample is only growing.

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PITTSBURGH — Dodgers reliever Scott Alexander had just finished his lunch and was walking down the 16th Street Mall in Denver last Friday when he received a text from Dodgers manager Dave Roberts.

“‘Hey, you’re getting your start today,”’ the text read, as Alexander remembers it. “‘One or two innings.’”

Alexander had not regularly started professional baseball games since he was in Rookie ball with the Royals in 2010.

The left-hander had watched with curiosity last month as Rays reliever Sergio Romo started back-to-back games for the Rays, ushering in a new label, “the opener,” and a new game strategy. And on that Friday at Coors Field, the movement spread to the Dodgers and the NL West, as Alexander pitched the first inning of an 11-8 win over the Rockies. The Dodgers employed the strategy again yesterday in Pittsburgh when Daniel Hudson started against the Pirates.

After learning of what the Rays were doing with Romo, Alexander approached Dodgers bullpen coach Mark Prior in the bullpen during a May 28 game at Dodger Stadium. There Alexander “half-jokingly” broached the idea with Prior, saying he would be open to “opening” for the Dodgers.

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The Dodgers are now back to having as many wins as losses. That’s not anything amazing — it has them tied with the Pirates — but as recently as May 16, the Dodgers were 16-26. Their most recent win was a five-run decision in Pittsburgh. Leading the way was Ross Stripling, who got the start and spun five shutout innings. He didn’t walk a batter, and he struck out seven. Back in March, the Dodgers wouldn’t have imagined they’d be here. Stripling’s start, though, was a representative one.

I’ve been on something of a Dodgers theme lately. That’s a coincidence, but then, the Dodgers’ early story is compelling. They haven’t gotten much from their supposed best players, and they’ve been lifted by a handful of surprises. The other day, I wrote about the surprising Max Muncy. Tuesday, I wrote about the surprising Matt Kemp. Now it’s time to write about the surprising Ross Stripling. When I woke up yesterday, Kemp was the Dodgers’ team leader in WAR. Stripling has now taken over the spot. Not bad for someone expected to pitch out of the bullpen.

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When I wrote about Max Muncy, I pointed out how strange a season it’s been for the Dodgers. Many of the best players have been hurt, or they’ve underperformed. Meanwhile, they’ve been supported by surprises like Muncy, Ross Stripling, and Matt Kemp. Muncy has been one of the team’s better hitters. Stripling has been the team’s most valuable pitcher. And Kemp has been the team’s most valuable overall player. I mean that in terms of WAR — Kemp has the highest figure on the club. At +1.8, he’s already done more than he did in any of the previous three years.

I skipped right by that when I was writing about Muncy, because I was writing about Muncy. But it’s just as big a deal. Remember, nobody wanted Kemp. Even the Dodgers didn’t want Kemp. It appeared he’d declined into being a valueless player. When he was traded, he wasn’t traded because of his skills; he was traded because of his contract. Now we’re more than two months into 2018, and Kemp’s a major reason why the Dodgers are even alive. His present WAR alone might be the most astonishing early statistic.

I want to drill a little deeper. Kemp’s WAR is surprising. One component of his WAR is even more surprising.

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If there’s one thing to understand about the Dodgers’ season so far, it’s that it hasn’t been very good. The team has more losses than wins, and presently sits in third place in its division. If there’s a second thing to understand about their season so far, it’s that it could be so much worse. The Dodgers have the best Pythagorean record in the NL West. They have the best BaseRuns record in the NL West. They have the highest playoff odds in the NL West. And the team has already been put through the grinder.

Before the year, Clayton Kershaw was projected to lead the team in WAR. He ranks 10th, and he’s hurt. Corey Seager was projected to be second on the team in WAR. He ranks 14th, and he’s hurt. Cody Bellinger was projected to be third on the team in WAR. He ranks 16th, and there have been whispers of a demotion. Justin Turner was projected to be fourth on the team in WAR. He ranks 27th, because he was hurt. Rich Hill was projected to be sixth on the team in WAR. He ranks 39th, and he’s hurt.

The Dodgers are very much alive in the race, and they might very well be the favorites. And that’s despite the top of the roster having a strikingly unusual look. If it weren’t for a handful of surprise performances, they might already be too far underwater. The improbable team leader in WAR is Matt Kemp, a guy the Dodgers didn’t even want. The player in second is Ross Stripling, a starter who began in relief. And there’s another player who’s closing in on the lead. He homered twice on Sunday. Not long ago he was a 27-year-old spring training non-roster invitee. Max Muncy is slugging .551.

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The 2018 Dodgers found a new way to hit rock bottom, losing four straight at home to the Reds, the NL’s worst team. They’ve now lost 14 of 19 and, at 16-24, with Corey Seager out for the season, Justin Turner yet to play and both Clayton Kershaw and Hyun-Jin Ryu on the disabled list, they entered Monday just a game ahead of the Padres (16-26) in the NL West. Read that again: a team with a payroll of nearly $200 million, one that lost Game Seven of the World Series, is within spitting distance of a rebuilding club that hasn’t seen a .500 season since 2010.

Through the first 40 games of the season, the Dodgers have fared worse than all but two of the previous 17 teams that lost the World Series — namely, the 2001 Mets and the 2008 Rockies, both of whom stumbled out of the gate at 15-25. Which raises the question: is there a “World Series hangover” for teams that lose the Fall Classic?

Last year, in the wake of the 2016 champion Cubs’ sluggish start, the powers that be at Sports Illustrated asked me to investigate the possible existence of a World Series hangover effect, particularly given that no team had repeated as champion since the Yankees in 1999 and 2000. While conceding that the numerous areas one might examine (such as a year-after effect on pitcher performance and injury, or on hitters and aging) are endless and potentially fascinating, I chose to keep things simple by testing a couple of theories — namely, that (a) the defending champions were more likely to start slowly the following year and that (b) said teams were more likely to finish slowly.

It’s easy to project narratives on either of those theories. In the case of the first, perhaps a shortened offseason left players too little time to rest and recover, or the front office was reluctant to break up a championship team. In the case of the second, perhaps it takes longer for the heavier workload to catch up, or for their luck to finally run out. But instead of falling back on such explanations, I simply decided to see where the data took me.

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Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Scouting reports are compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as from our own (both Eric Longenhagen’s and Kiley McDaniel’s) observations. For more information on the 20-80 scouting scale by which all of our prospect content is governed you can click here. For further explanation of the merits and drawbacks of Future Value, read this.

All the numbered prospects here also appear on THE BOARD, a new feature at the site that offers sortable scouting information for every organization. Click here to visit THE BOARD.

55 FV Prospects

Buehler roared back from Tommy John in 2016 and sat 96-99 with a plus curveball and slider/cutter in his first outing back from surgery. That was harder than he ever threw at Vanderbilt. He threw only five affiliated innings, but the Dodgers immediately began internal conversations about how to get him to the big leagues in 2017. They did, and after a late-summer move to the bullpen, Buehler got a nine-inning September espresso.

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On Friday night, in just his third major-league start, Walker Buehler delivered on the promise that the Dodgers envisioned when they made him the 24th pick of the 2015 draft out of Vanderbilt. Pitching on a rainy night at Estadio de Beisbol Monterrey, in the opener of the three-game Mexico Series, the 23-year-old righty held the Padres hitless for six innings while striking out eight and walking three. But with his pitch count at 93, one short of his professional high, manager Dave Roberts did not waver in his decision to put the brakes on the kid’s bid for a slice of baseball immortality.

Via the Orange County Register’s Bill Plunkett, Beuhler said that Roberts “told me I was out of pitches and I was out of the game.”

This wasn’t the first time that Roberts pulled a starter who had yet to allow a hit, but it was the first time that his decision paid off in full, as relievers Yimi Garcia, Tony Cingrani,and Adam Liberatore each chipped in a hitless inning, thus completing the 12th combined no-hitter in big-league history and the first in franchise history. Prior to that — and jusy five games into his managerial career, on April 8, 2016 — Roberts had removed Ross Stripling after 7.1 innings of hitless ball against the Giants. The 26-year-old Stripling, who himself was making his major-league debut, had thrown 100 pitches and had walked four batters when Roberts called for the bullpen. Having missed all of 2014 due to Tommy John surgery, he understood the precautionary move, even though it backfired, as reliever Chris Hatcher promptly gave up a game-tying home run to the next batter, and the Dodgers eventually lost.

Things worked out better for the team when Roberts pulled 36-year-old Rich Hill after seven perfect innings on September 10 of that year. Though Joe Blanton surrendered a single with two outs in the eighth, the Dodgers did get the win.

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The Dodgers have not gotten off to the start they would have liked this season. Failing to win even half their games, they’ve seen the Diamondbacks parlay a strong first month into a place atop the NL West standings. The combination of those two developments has allowed the D-backs to turn the Dodgers’ projected 14-game divisional edge at the beginning of the season into a complete tossup.

Injury has played a part in LA’s struggles. The club, of course, recently learned that star shortstop Corey Seager would miss the entire season with Tommy John surgery. In addition to Seager, Logan Forsythe, Yasiel Puig, and Justin Turner have all missed time, as well. Despite all that, however, Dodgers position players rank third among NL teams in WAR. The Dodgers’ depth in the lineup has thus far passed the test.

For much of the the season’s first month, the club’s rotational depth hasn’t been tested in the same way. It’s about to be, however. And a good season out of prospect Walker Buehler — once a luxury in the organizational depth chart — could be necessary for the team to overtake the Diamondbacks in the division.

Before the season started, the Dodgers opted to get under the competitive balance tax to save money. In doing so, they absorbed the contract of the thus-far resurgent Matt Kemp, sending Scott Kazmir and Brandon McCarthy to Atlanta. Kazmir, since released by the Braves, was purely a salary dump, but McCarthy represented some depth for a Dodgers’ rotation that already had quite a few arms. Walker Buehler was foremost among that depth, but after pitching around 100 innings last year in his return from Tommy John surgery, he might have to blow past that mark this year to keep the Dodgers in the race.

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