Dodgers Prospect Notes: Hurt & Lockhart combine on shutout, Beeter solid, Amaya homers, a lot more

(Photo: Tim Campbell/MiLB)

June 17th, 2022 Scoreboard

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Kyle Hurt was spitting fire for Great Lakes during his portion of their shutout win:

Hurt pitched around three walks, all of which came in the first two innings. The burly righty lowered his FIP to 2.50, which is 5th in the Midwest League (min 30.0 innings pitched).

Hurt has had two clunker outings this season, on April 14th, and on May 31st, which lasted all of 2.2 innings combined, and during which he tallied half of his season total of 18 walks. Outside of those two missteps, in 29.0 innings across nine outings, he has an ERA of 0.62, a FIP of 1.82, with 45 Ks vs just nine walks.

The long and short of it is, when Hurt is filling up the zone, as he has done in nine of his 11 outings, he has been completely overwhelming for High A hitters. It’s just the wrinkles that need ironing.

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What Hurt started, Lael Lockhart finished emphatically, and he got himself a souvenir in the process:

Lockhart allowed three baserunners, but he was able to erase one of them pretty quickly, as he is wont to do:

Lockhart’s record is now 2-0, and he lowered his ERA to 2.19.

In addition to the more traditional lefty pickoff move, the crafty lefty has shown a couple different snap throw looks. To me, this pickoff from three weeks ago is the dirtiest one this season, working the quick stepoff into how he typically sets his feet:

Like fellow 9th round senior pick Tony Gonsolin, with Lockhart, the Dodgers have found an interesting mound presence who’s a ton of fun to watch. The Dodgers never mail in a draft pick.

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Speaking of fun outings to watch, Clayton Beeter righted his ship for Tulsa, putting together one of his stronger outings of the season:

For Beeter, it has largely been feast or famine. When he’s off, things go sideways, literally and figuratively. When things go South, his fastball has lost its shape, it flattens out, and runs arm-side, often out of the zone. As for the figurative side, 14 of the 17 earned runs he has allowed this season came in just four outings.

The mustachioed righty needs to gain consistency with his fastball command and shape to stick as a starting pitcher, but the fallback option of a power reliever with huge secondaries isn’t too bad, either.

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Jacob Amaya was promoted from Tulsa to Oklahoma City this past Monday, and although things got off to a slow start, he got things going with a huge bang:

The fireworks continued on the next night as well:

In the last two games combined, Amaya is 5/9 at the plate, with two homers and nine RBI.

One other thing of note for the El Monte native — on Thursday he played second base. This was his first time playing there during a full season game since August 27th, 2019. As he is on the 40-man roster, and although he is the best defensive shortstop in the organization at the moment, expanding his toolkit only serves to make him a more viable roster piece, should the Dodgers decide to shake things up with their bench.

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Some brief notes about a few guys:

Miguel Vargas continues to hit in the leadoff spot, and he did the sparkplug thing on Friday, going 2/4, drawing a pair of walks, reaching base five times overall, and even stealing a base.

Samuel Munoz, who was the top player in the January ’22 IFA class for the Dodgers, was referred to at the time as a really advanced hitter. While he hasn’t shown much power yet, the advanced hitter part is still playing out in the very early going over in the Dominican Summer League, as he’s slashing .316/.481/.368.

Jesus Galiz, who took a foul ball off his knee on Saturday, June 11th, ended up not needing an IL stint after all, though he has caught just one game since, and has DHed twice for the ACL Dodgers.

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Here are the scheduled starting pitchers for the full season affiliates for Saturday, June 18th:

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It’s good to be back. Enjoy your Saturday, folks.

About Josh Thomas