Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
Happy All-Star break to everybody, and despite how the Dodgers finished the first half, I hope you’ll take solace in the fact that they have the best record in baseball.
Anyway, reading material.
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The Athletic: Max Muncy recently opened up about mental health struggles on a podcast, and this is a great article about how Dodgers mental skills coach Brent Walker helps him and others.
Walker has reassured Muncy of his place. So much of their work together is simple conversation. Muncy will tell him how he’s feeling. Walker will listen, reinforce and encourage. The effects are massive.
With Walker’s help, Muncy learned to cope with the inevitable struggles of a major-league season. The difference is so stark that he often thinks back to when he was a younger player, a washout with the Athletics who nearly gave up on the game. What could he have done differently back then?
“I would love to see what kind of player that guy could be,” Muncy said. “A lot of the things are still the same. It’s just the knowledge that I’ve gained, and that’s only something you can gain with experience.”
Muncy also talked about how the Dodgers helped make his incorporation into the clubhouse seamless.
“They make a lot of decisions with players in mind,” Muncy said. “They bring players in and they ask them, ‘What do you think about this? What do you think about that?’ The way we travel — that has been documented very well now. The way that they just interact with players instead of just saying, ‘Here’s how we’re doing things, you guys have to deal with it.’ They want to have the conversations back and forth to know.”
A great read.
The Athletic: While I realize this is amusing timing given the All-Star break swoon on defense, here’s a feature about how a group of old guys are somehow putting together one of the best defenses in baseball against all odds.
“I think each of those guys made a concerted effort to be better,” manager Dave Roberts said. “I think now the eye test, also with analytics, the data, they’re seeing where they are relative to themselves, to the field. And they knew they needed to get better. So to their credit, they all got better.”
“They want to get better,” Ebel said. “When you see Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman and Rojas and Kiké (Hernández) and Muncy, the older guys that are out there doing their work, the younger guys are going to follow suit.”
FanGraphs: Relatedly, there are stats to back that defensive improvement up, and at the time the article was written they were the best defensive team in baseball.
With strong work by Muncy, Betts (7 DRS and 4 FRV in just 49 games at shortstop), Freeland (6 DRS and 3 FRV in 60 games at second), and first baseman Freddie Freeman (2 DRS and 2 FRV in a rebound from a bad year afield tied to his late-2024 ankle woes), the Dodgers infield leads the majors with 27 DRS — 11 runs ahead of the second-ranked Brewers — and ranks third with 18 FRV. Led by Pages, the outfield ranks fourth in DRS (17) and sixth in FRV (8). With that level of quality blanketing the field, it’s not surprising that through Sunday, the team’s .734 Defensive Efficiency led the majors by 10 points.
After long stretches last year where the defense looked borderline disastrous and it seemed like it would cost them in October, they’ve really turned it around collectively this year and made it part of their strength thanks to doing the little things over and over. Hopefully they resume doing that again coming out of the break.
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MLB: The Dodgers have placed nine prospects in the Top 100 of MLB Pipeline’s updated list. That’s the most in baseball, and it’s unsurprising as a bunch of them are breaking out. The nine are: Josue De Paula (#4), Mike Sirota (#12), Zyhir Hope (#20), Eduardo Quintero (#33), Emil Morales (#49), River Ryan (#72), Charles Davalan (#89), Christian Zazueta (#92), and James Tibbs III (#98).
Baseball America: They rank the system of the Dodgers third in baseball. The strength and weakness of the system won’t surprise you.
Strength of the System: Outfielders. There are 28 outfielders on the current Top 100. More than one-sixth of them belong to the Dodgers, who also have three of the top six outfield prospects in the game right now. Between Josue De Paula, Mike Sirota, Eduardo Quintero, Zyhir Hope and Charles Davalan, the Dodgers have an embarrassment of riches in the outfield.
System Weakness: Catching. The Dodgers have had an assembly line of catching prospects over the years, as they produced Will Smith, Austin Barnes and Dalton Rushing for themselves, and they traded away Keibert Ruiz, Thayron Liranzo and Connor Wong to other clubs. But right now, the Dodgers don’t have a next-up catching prospect in the system.
TJStats: Brady Smith isn’t mentioned much among the parade of Dodgers prospects, but he might be starting to put it together.
Brady Smith, the Dodgers 3rd round selection from the 2023 draft, did not start his pro career until the end of 2025 following Tommy John surgery. Smith is looking to make up for lost time, and his production in Lo-A this season has been stellar. He is currently rocking a 37.9% K% which was strengthened in the last two weeks where he struck out 17 over 9.0 innings. Smith has a jam-packed arsenal headlined by a mid-90s, high-riding fastball, a trio of breaking balls, and a changeup running a near 50% whiff rate.
Smith’s swing-and-miss numbers are fully backed up by his tantalizing stuff and make him an arm to watch in the Dodgers system.
Also highlighted is Zazueta, and Hyun-Seok Jang is mentioned as well.
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FanGraphs: Following Alex Call‘s recent shenanigans, when to use ABS has been a frequent topic of discussion. Here’s a nice summary of both the article and my thoughts on it:
Should be interesting if the Dodgers can find a way to drill this into the heads of the players by playoff time.
The Athletic: A great deep dive that’s basically about how farm systems are being gutted and the impact of that on development in baseball.
Those roster restrictions have caused distinct challenges in leagues where development, not winning, is prioritized and where prospects are often kept on strict workload schedules. It’s common for big-league teams to ask their Triple-A affiliates to hold two or three pitchers out of a game in case the MLB club needs reinforcements. Or for a Triple-A pitcher to be held to 40 or 50 pitches to remain a potential option for a team unsure if a big-league starter will make his next turn. Some teams are more likely to sit players with minor injuries rather than put them on the injured list, and those players count toward the roster limit unless they’re placed on the 60-day IL.
The stuff about AAA not being as much of a test anymore is something I’ve heard constantly since the restrictions were put into place, and it’s frequently cited as a reason why perhaps some rookies are taking longer than expected to adjust and why they might not be as well prepared for just how good MLB players are.
“You don’t have as many learning moments in Triple A because those guys who have six, seven, eight years (of MLB experience) fighting to get back are not there,” said Orioles slugger Pete Alonso. “You want to have the best talent playing against each other at all times, but there is the level of gamesmanship in a level of higher play. I feel like that is missing for sure, and that’s just the system.
This, of course, will come back to the CBA.
Baseball’s popularity is surging at a time when the sport’s labor issues are particularly acrimonious. In addition to the draft changes, owners have already proposed a big-league salary cap and floor, both of which the MLB players’ union vehemently opposes. A long work stoppage seems almost inevitable.
But for all the talk about the looming CBA negotiations, the minor-league negotiations after next season could also have considerable ramifications for the game. Executives from multiple teams in big and small markets fear that the leveling of the minor leagues has taken away an important aspect of the game: creativity.
My problem? The MLBPA has routinely made conceding on the minors side of things a part of their bargaining strategy, so I’m not optimistic.
Given the state of CBA negotiations, no potential change is off the table. As owners continue to try to outsource player development, there is legitimate concern about the future of the game.
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Let’s end on a light note with Shohei Ohtani After Dark content.
