Below is an analysis of the prospects in the farm system of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Scouting reports were compiled with information provided by industry sources as well as my own observations. This is the fourth year we’re delineating between two anticipated relief roles, the abbreviations for which you’ll see in the “position” column below: MIRP for multi-inning relief pitchers, and SIRP for single-inning relief pitchers. The ETAs listed generally correspond to the year a player has to be added to the 40-man roster to avoid being made eligible for the Rule 5 draft. Manual adjustments are made where they seem appropriate, but we use that as a rule of thumb.
A quick overview of what FV (Future Value) means can be found here. A much deeper overview can be found here.
All of the ranked prospects below also appear on The Board, a resource the site offers featuring sortable scouting information for every organization. It has more details (and updated TrackMan data from various sources) than this article and integrates every team’s list so readers can compare prospects across farm systems. It can be found here.
Other Prospects of Note
Grouped by type and listed in order of preference within each category.
Depth Starter Types
John Rooney, LHP
Justin Chambers, LHP
Orlando Ortiz-Mayr, RHP
Roque Gutierrez, RHP
Hyun-il Choi, RHP
Christian Romero, RHP
Rooney is a 27-year-old lefty who could make a spot start tomorrow if he had to, commanding in a low-90s sinker/cutter/slider mix. Chambers is more of a dev project, a high school lefty acquired from Milwaukee for Bryan Hudson. He currently has 40-grade stuff, but all three of his pitches have a shot to be at least average. Ortiz-Mayr and Gutierrez are undersized strike-throwers built like Ramon Ortiz. Choi and Romero have impact offspeed pitches.
Many, Many Guys Who Throw Hard Enough To Be Interesting
Franklin De La Paz, LHP
Michael Hobbs, RHP
Angel Cruz, RHP
Kelvin Bautista, LHP
Jake Pilarski, RHP
Alvaro Benua, RHP
Braydon Fisher, RHP
Jerming Rosario, RHP
Carlos De Los Santos, RHP
Joel Ibarra, RHP
Kelvin Ramirez, RHP
Christian Suarez, LHP
Dailoui Abad, RHP
Cam Day, RHP
The Dodgers tend to be good at developing velocity and end up with a whole host of pitchers who are of note because they throw hard, which is often enough on its own to make them interesting to other teams. De La Paz had a long TJ rehab and didn’t quite kick the door down upon his return, but he remains pretty interesting because he has rare arm strength for a lefty sidearmer and his slider has huge break. He’s a little too erratic to be relied upon at the big league level, but he has nasty LOOGY stuff. Hobbs is a high-effort, three-pitch reliever with average big league stuff that plays up a bit because of big extension. He has a fairly standard vertical fastball/breaking ball attack. Cruz is a projectable DSL righty with a funky cross-bodied delivery and a big slider. He kind of looks like early-stages Freddy Peralta or Adam Ottavino, relief risk and all.
Now we get into the part of the group where virtually everyone has command issues that meaningfully impact their profile. Bautista (acquired in a trade with Texas for Dennis Santana) is a little guy and has a good breaking ball. Pilarski started throwing hard in a lab and was in the upper-90s last spring, but he fell more into the mid-90s during the regular season. He’s a stiffer, older guy. Benua, 21, sits 94-97 and is somewhat deceptive, but he’s also a bigger, fairly stiff athlete and not as likely to fix that as most 21-year-olds. The next five pitchers are all max-effort mid-90s guys. Rosario’s slider command makes him slightly more reliable than the rest of that group. Suarez also has a good breaking ball, but his fastball relies on angle rather than velo. Abad, 21, is a 93-96 mph sinker/slider guy. Day, undrafted out of Utah, was sitting 94-95 with heavy sink and a plus changeup during instructs.
More Short Pitchers
Sean Linan, RHP
Samuel Sanchez, RHP
Christian Zazueta, RHP
Nicolas Cruz, RHP
The Dodgers have targeted shorter, hyper-athletic pitching in all avenues of talent acquisition, and I think they have enough of these guys now to call it a pattern for the org. In addition to the several shawties on the main section of the list, they have a few others percolating at the complex level and below. Linan doesn’t have the frame projection of a typical 19-year-old, but he’s a flexible, low-to-the-ground athlete who throws strikes with three different pitches. His fastball sits 90 but has plus-plus ride. Sanchez is more changeup oriented and stands a chance to throw the hardest of this group, as the 5-foot-11 19-year-old has already peaked at 97. Zazueta, who came back from the Yankees for Caleb Ferguson, is a skinny, cross-fire righty with breaking ball and changeup feel. Cruz, 19, has a five-pitch mix right now and goes right at hitters.
Power Only
Mairoshendrick Martinus, SS/CF
Elias Medina, SS/3B
Easton Shelton, 1B/DH
Chris Newell, OF
Joe Vetrano, 1B
Damon Keith, OF
Kyle Nevin, 4C
Logan Wagner, 2B/3B
Martinus looks the part in the uniform perhaps more than any non-Joendry Vargas player in the org and has the athleticism to play all over the diamond, but his pitch recognition is particularly poor. Medina is another toolsy, high-risk sort similar to the Luis Yanel Diaz and Yunior Garcia types of recent Camelback summers. When I first saw Shelton on the backfields, I assumed he was some senior sign thumper, he’s so enormous and strong. He was still 17 until September. Newell (Virginia) and Vetrano (Boston College) are broad-shouldered college performers. Keith’s underlying TrackMan data from 2023 is kinda nutty — he regularly hits the ball as hard as all but a few big leaguers, we’re talking 70-grade raw on paper. His strikeout issues are severe enough that he struggled to tap into that power in the mid-minors. Nevin and Wagner (who has barely played pro ball) were both cheated onto this section; they’re as valuable for their potential defensive versatility as they are their pop.
Contact-Driven Profiles
Jeral Perez, 2B/3B
Yeiner Fernandez, C/2B
Elio Campos, 2B
Jose Izarra, SS
Bryan Gonzalez, SS
Nelson Quiroz, C
Victor Rodrigues, C
This group is pretty self-explanatory. Perez has a more balanced contact/power profile than the rest of the group, but I’m skeptical that he will sustain it as he faces better velo. Yeiner would be on the main section of the list if I felt comfortable with him playing either second base or catcher, but he isn’t especially good at either. He’s kept his strikeout rate in the 12% range as he’s entered the upper minors. Campos has the most typical big leauge body of the next three little infielders; Izarra and Gonzalez can play defense but are light in the bat. Quiroz is a switch-hitting catcher who looked erratic on both sides of the ball during instructs. Rodrigues is a stocky catcher who had among the best contact rates in the org.
System Overview
It doesn’t have the top-of-the-list star power it has tended to have during the last half decade or so, but the Dodgers system remains deep and healthy. It is a bit imbalanced, heavy on pitching and lighter on stable position player prospects. The Dodgers develop pitching as well as any organization in baseball, and they have a combination of both depth and quality that will guard their big league club against injury-related disaster for the foreseeable future. They tend to target pitchers who haven’t had a ton of reps (either because they’ve been hurt or were a two-way player) and mold them from scratch, and they’ve been able to enhance the arm strength of smaller pitchers who the industry tends to be skeptical will be able to do so.
The high-upside hitters in the premium FV tiers (40+ and above) are pretty volatile (De Paula, Cartaya, Liranzo, Osorio, Vargas, Morales, Quintero) with the exception of Rushing. These are good prospects, but the nature of the developmental process, especially when we’re talking about very young hitters, is one of attrition. It’s likely only a few of these guys will actually pan out, and even the ones who do will probably take a fair amount of time. That’s okay for now because the big league roster is so complete (though I stand by what I wrote in my 40-man roster deadline piece when I said they’re taking a risk standing pat at shortstop because I’m not convinced Gavin Lux can play there), and it’s not easy to come by great position player prospects when you’re almost always picking at the very end of each round, but this system lacks good hitters from the domestic draft.
Oh, it probably goes without saying, but Yoshinobu Yamamoto would be no. 1 on this list if we still considered all “rookies” to be “prospects.” But as Yamamoto would not net the Dodgers draft pick compensation under the Prospect Promotion Incentive program were he to win Rookie of the Year or place in the top three for MVP or the Cy Young, he was omitted. You can find his report and tool grades on the International Players section of The Board. Will his presence (and that of the large group of other foreign professionals who signed with National League teams) impact whether rival clubs have prospects on their Opening Day rosters? They would seem less incentivized to do so this year because of the crowded field of Imanaga, Matsui, Lee, and Yamamoto in the NL. If the BBWAA (of which I am not a member) resolved as a group to omit these players from their awards ballots, would it have an impact on whether or not other prospects break camp?
