Reviews, Previews, and Ranks: Los Angeles Dodgers
Introduction & Glossary Post Here
Last one here and then I have written up every team! This is coming more than two months after I published team #28. I will try my best to not have another baby next December so this series doesn’t get derailed like it did this time.
This article is free for everybody, but most of the other teams are behind the paywall. If you want full access to the rest of the teams, become a paid subscriber and you’ll get that along with everything else involved here - a list which has gotten quite long over the last 12 months.
The shine has really worn off here, but I have to finish what I have started. Let’s breeze through the Dodgers.
Pitchers
Clayton Kershaw
Kershaw is not getting any worse with age:
He still cruised past the 20% K-BB% that we love to see, and this time around he even dropped the barrel rate allowed to near a career-best. We can’t really trust that Brl% stuff - but whatever, the K% and BB% stuff is elite and the SwStr% is still up there with the league’s best.
The obvious issue with Kershaw is innings. He made 22 starts each of the last two years, leaving us well short of the possibility that he’s a top-ten starter. Unlike other starters who have struggled to stay healthy recently, I doubt the Dodgers even want him to make 28+ starts under any circumstance. You still have to figure the Dodgers cruise to the playoffs, so they will probably prioritize Kershaw’s October health well ahead of him making a starting every week this year.
At the end of the year, they weren’t even starting him on a normal schedule even when he was healthy - giving him 6-day rest quite often.
The good news is that he’s priced to match all of this, and if you get another 22-start season you’ll likely do just fine for where you buy him (ADP 123, on average the 39th SP off the board). That makes him an SP4 on average in a 12-team league, and if you have a good replacement for him on those weeks he’s out - that combo turns into a pretty darn good starter on your fantasy team.
Julio Urias
He had another great year on the hill for the Dodgers, but he remained a lower K% guy (24%), and the walk rate even came up to 6% - still a very good number but not quite the 4.7% BB% from 2021.
Urias relies on soft contact, which is typically a bit of a scary thing - but at this point with Urias, I think you can believe in it since he’s done it over and over again.
His SwStr% at 12.4% supports that sub-25% K%, so I think that’s just what we should expect. He is Max Fried. On average he’s the 14th SP off the board, which for me is just too expensive. If you’re in a raw strikeouts league, I don’t think he’s the guy for you - because you are fully reliant on that 190+ IP for him to benefit your team’s strikeout total.
Tony Gonsolin
Gonsolin went for a 2.14 ERA and a 0.87 WHIP over 130 innings. Nobody is buying that at all with the 24% K% and 7% BB% and all of the “good fortune” he had on contact.
The projection systems all have him above a 3.75 ERA and a 1.20 WHIP - a very far cry from what he did last year.
The reason for that is seemingly twofold. First, the ERA indicators make him look like an average pitcher (K%, BB%, GB%). Second, he benefited a ton from the shift last year and that is now gone.
It’s not to say that the Dodgers can’t come up with something great again to get the most out of their players - they seemingly always do, but they were one of the most aggressive teams on deploying shifts and now they will be at least very limited on what they can do there.
The funny thing is that Gonsolin is priced almost too cheaply as the 49th pitcher off the board on average. So yeah, long gone are the days when people give even a single thought to last year’s ERA when making their SP rankings/projections.
Dustin May
Wrote about him in the breakout pitchers piece that came out today, so I’ll just leave it at that.
The reason people aren’t drafting super aggressively is the innings concerns. Those are fair enough. The good news is that he came back last season; he’s really far removed from that elbow surgery. He then went back on the IL at the end of the year with a back/oblique problem. That injury is definitely scaring people, but it’s not like it was an issue with the surgically repaired elbow - so I’m not going to freak out about it.
What we have here is legitimately one of the most talented pitchers in the league that could just do ridiculous things. I think he has 30% K%, 7% BB%, and 52% GB% in the profile which would absolutely make him a top-10 SP, and right now he’s the 44th pitcher off the board on average. He will probably be one of my most-drafted pitchers this year.
Hitters
Mookie Betts
Still one of the best in the business at making consistent elite contact (16% K%, 84% Contact%, 9.7% Brl%, 45% hard-hit%). He’s still willing to steal bags, and will probably do that even more so with the new rules.
He does not have elite raw power in terms of exit velocity, but he is just so good with the bat that he adds a bunch of homers by pulling the ball and getting it right into the right launch angle profile. He’s fantastic. Assuming health, he probably leads the league in runs, hits 30 bombs, and steals 20 bags - and he goes late in the first round. I like the back end of the first round more than the front end because of guys like Betts (and Tucker and Yordan…).
Freddie Freeman
He’s coming off the best batting average of his career (.325). He scored 117 runs, hit 21 homers, drove in 100, and even swiped 13 bags.
The 21 homers were his worst output since 2015. His barrel rate also fell below 10% for the first time since 2018, and the expected wOBA stuff declined as well. He was definitely a big beneficiary of the live ball stuff in 2019 - so I think he’s more of a 20-25 HR guy right now.
With the best bet being 23 HR and 15 SB (or so), it does make you wonder if he’s really worth a top-15 pick. The batting average, runs, and RBI will certainly be elite - and he’s definitely not hurting any teams with his HR and SB - so that justifies the pick, but of all these other top-20 hitters he is coming up short in the HR+SB upside.
Will Smith
Smith saw nearly 600 PAs last year, which is hugely valuable at the catcher position. However, his .260 average and 24 HRs came up a little bit short of what people really wanted. He’s more of just a “good hitter” at a bad position rather than being truly one of the league’s best hitters.
That said, he did go for a great 17% K% and a nice 10.3% Barrel Rate, which makes you wonder if he could get up to 30 homers at some point. His xwOBA was good but not great at .344. He doesn’t have that next-level raw power. His 90th percentile exit velo was behind Trea Turner - so yeah, maybe the low-20s is right for his homer output.
The reason you’d draft Smith is that he will play more than other catchers and he won’t hurt you in any category besides SB. He DH’d 24 times last year, and I don’t think that number is coming down in 2023 since the Dodgers’ offensive depth got worse rather than better.
I can see the case for putting all of Realmuto, Varsho, and Rutschman ahead of him. Personally, I’ll take Smith as my #2 catcher - but this year more than others he doesn’t stand out above the rest of the catcher crowd.
Max Muncy
He should benefit from the shift - he’s one of those guys that stick out most when you look into that stuff. His Brl% stayed great (13.4%), and he kept hitting a bitchload of fly balls (39.5%).
The shift thing could make a huge difference for Muncy given that he killed fantasy teams in AVG last year at just .196 (.208 xBA). My projection system gets rid of the shift and spits out a .237 average for Muncy - which is almost to the territory where it’s significantly hurting your fantasy team. Couple that with the 30+ HR and 90+ RBI potential and you have yourself a very good mid-round 3B pick. He’s definitely a player I’m prioritizing if I don’t get anybody from the top tier at the position. Big fan of Muncy once again!
J.D. Martinez
It seems like the age got to him in 2022. His average launch velo fell to 88.9 miles per hour, a pretty bad number, and the K% crept up to 24.4% while he slugged just .448. He still had a good barrel rate at 12.5%, but the Brl/PA was short of that at a less exciting 8.25%.
The Dodgers must think they can squeeze out another good season or two from him, signing him to a deal this offseason. It’s hard not to like his RBI prospects presumedly hitting #5 or #6 in this loaded lineup. The Green Monster seems to have hurt his HR output last year:
xHR in Fenway: 17
xHR in Dodgers Stadium: 24
There would seem to be a real 25-homer, 90+ RBI, .260+ average potential here - provided another year of age doesn’t really reduce his swing speed even more.
The other question is do the Dodgers plan on DHing him every day? I can’t answer that, but you wouldn’t think a guy like J.D. would be super cool with being benched very often, so I wouldn’t worry too much about that.
The DH/UTIL-only eligibility sucks on some sites, but he’s cheap:
I would bet that he will really crush most of the rest of the hitters taken around him in the 200s - but of course, those guys come with much more upside.
All-in-all, I guess I’m in on J.D. for another year!
Gavin Lux
I think we have to give up on our hopes that Lux can be a good power hitter. He did beat his 2021 Brl% of 3.9% - but it settled at 6.1%, which is still a quite low number. He hit just 6 homers over 471 plate appearances.
We’ve now seen him in the league since 2019, and he’s 25 now. That’s still quite young obviously, but yeah I think it’s very unlikely he hits 20 homers. That stings even more because he stole just seven bases last year.
The projection systems are expecting more playing time, but the Dodgers did bring in Rojas as an infield option and have Vargas as a utility type and Outman as an outfielder they have long-term plans for - so it’s not right to say that Lux is an everyday player.
So we have a guy that doesn’t do anything super great (for fantasy) with questionable playing time - I think the fade is the right way to go.
Trayce Thompson
He is right up there with the game’s best raw power hitters (16.4% Brl%, 108.1 90th percentile max velo led the Dodgers last year), but he strikes out a ton (36.5%) and definitely isn’t a guy the Dodgers have a long-term plan for. He will be 32 this season and was chucked around between three different teams last year.
What you can say is that the guy will hit homers while he’s playing, but he’ll hurt your team in everything else and probably won’t even start 70% of the time. It’s a tempting pick to make since he’s basically free and could be a legit 25+ HR guy if the Dodgers are forced into making him an everyday player, but overall it seems like he’s bound for the waiver wire this year (sweet DFS play though).
Chris Taylor
He had one of the league’s worst contact rates last year at 60%. That played to a 35% strikeout rate. He has been above 28% every year since 2017 - so that’s who he is.
He did put up a decent barrel rate with it (10.2%), but that’s not really what you’re looking for with a 30% K%. I don’t see much reason to draft Taylor at this point unless you’re in a crazy deep league where his multi-eligibility makes a big difference. If things play out right for him, he could go 15-15 this year but that is about as nice as I can be.
James Outman
We will have to wait until Spring Training games get going to see what the Dodgers really want from Outman right away. He’s a top-20 prospect for them and it seems like he’ll get a chance to win an everyday outfield job this year.
In the minors last year: 563 PA, .294/.394/.586, 31 HR, 14 SB
He saw just 16 PAs in the Majors, so nothing to be said there. He spent about half of his season in AAA so we have some Statcast data on him:
73.4% Contact%, 15.1% Brl%, 113.2 max velo, 91.3 average velo, 19 degree angle
That’s a very enticing power profile there. He did strike out 25% of the time in AAA, which puts a warning label on him as a guy who could just be Trayce Thompson or Chris Taylor (28%+ K% with power) this year, but he could also potentially maintain a 24-27% K% and have that work out just fine with a 12%+ barrel rate.
He’s a pretty good speculative guy to draft as a guy that for sure has a fantastic swing speed. He could truly be one of the big breakouts of this year, and getting players on the Dodgers is always a good thing for your fantasy team.
Miguel Vargas
The ASS model really likes him. The Dodgers seem to want him to find a spot in the everyday lineup by the early reports, and he can play a few different positions which helps his case.
In the minors last year:
525 PA, .307/.406/.519, 18 HR, 16 SB, 14.5% K%, 13.5% BB%
In the Majors:
50 PA, .170/.200/.255, 1 HR, 1 SB, 26% K%, 4% BB%
So he definitely could not carry over the AAA success right away - but we’re talking about only 50 PAs.
Statcast numbers in the minors:
81% Contact%, 9% Brl%, 112.7 max velo, 88.8 average velo, 15 degree angle
Less power than Outman, but way better contact ability. He was the only player in the Pacific Coast League to go for an 80%+ contact rate and a 9%+ barrel rate, so I think that’s why my projection system likes him so much. The contact and power ability are tough to put together, so it’s exciting to think about the Dodgers could do with this guy - especially since he can swipe some bags as well.
I’m buying Vargas where I can, although it’s certainly no lock that he’ll be a useful fantasy player this year.
That is the Dodgers, and that is the series! Paid subs can check out my write-ups on all 30 teams now - lots of good information in the series. Thanks for being here!