Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
As you might expect after a Dodgers debut like he had, a lot of the discourse and attention has been focused on Josue De Paula, and that’s resulted in a few great reads. There’s also stuff on a The Last Dance vibe, Kyle Tucker‘s trying season, Andrew Friedman‘s place among his peers, Elijah Hainline waiting to break out, and the results of better stuff versus command.
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The Athletic: The narrative around this Dodgers team is definitely heading down The Last Dance type of way, so talking to those veterans about it certainly seems appropriate.
And here they are again, after winning 100 games and a division title, primed to make history.
But for several of the Dodgers’ oldest players, this could be their last ride.
“When we strapped it on and said three-peat,” Betts added, “We all knew it’s the only chance we’re gonna get at this.”
“This window, we are going to try and keep open as long as we possibly can,” Freddie Freeman said. “But sports are sports; you never know when those windows will close.”
A great read worth your time.
The Athletic: I’m not shocked with a feature on Kyle Tucker heading into the postseason, given that his performance there could turn an all-time flop of a season into something remembered fondly. I am shocked he opened up to the media in a 35-minute interview about it.
“I’m probably not going to be the one that’s out there screaming and jumping around and everything,” Tucker said with a shrug. “If I get a hit, I mean, that’s kind of my job.”
Perception and reality are different things, Miguel Rojas said.
“I feel like Tucker is being a good teammate, and he’s been working his ass off to kind of go out there and produce,” Rojas said. “But baseball is not like that. It’s not like you’re gonna work, and instantly it’s gonna work.”
He and the Dodgers talk about his struggles, getting him to open up to teammates and coaches, and the relatively good place he is at now.
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Dodger Insider: Josue De Paula talked about how he deals with all the pressure and attention.
“I feel the adrenaline, but I just feel like I just know how to pinpoint it and focus it,” De Paula said of how he felt in the batter’s box. “So I’m so locked in, but I feel I know how to like calm myself down.”
It’s what you want.
The Sporting Tribune: Also what you want? His response to concerns about his defense.
“I know that’s a big area and improvement for me,” De Paula said. “I know I got a lot of hate on it. So I’m that type: if I get hate on it, I’m gonna focus on it more. So I’m gonna shut a lot of people up with my defense very soon.”
I’ve already seen people who are trying to dull his shine and paint him as arrogant or whatever else, but even ignoring the elephant in the room with regards to those types of comments, it’s telling that those people can’t seem to separate the kind of grating interpersonal/makeup cockiness that sidetracks young players and simple self-belief/confidence where he alludes to putting in even more work. The latter is exactly what you want, as he’s not dismissive and claiming he’s already great, he’s saying he takes the critique personal and is motivated to fix it. Hard to see this attitude as anything but encouraging.
Besides, it’s an almost comically veteran clubhouse with a similarly experienced manager and a conservative front office that allows them to all have a word in decisions. If he rubbed them the wrong way or there was any anticipation that he was the type who could upset the apple cart — especially given the reps of some guys to pull young guys aside (like Dalton Rushing) — they wouldn’t have risked this and they wouldn’t be celebrating him the way they are.
Quite the opposite, as he’s been surprised by the welcome being as warm as it has, and it speaks to the general vibe of the clubhouse towards young guys they feel are ready.
Baseball America: As for why there’s been so much attention on his defense, or his lack of ability to currently play it, J.J. Cooper put in the work and looked at all his defensive chances this year.
Here’s a sample of what will give the Dodgers pause when they consider playing De Paula in the outfield this October. Playing right and left field early in the season and left field exclusively from July 8 onward, De Paula had 172 total chances in 95 games in the outfield in the minors this year. He DH’d 29 times at Tulsa. In those 95 games, there were more than 15 plays in which his defensive issues turned outs into baserunners or allowed extra bases on hits.
He also compared JDP to the other admittedly poor defensive outfielders on the team in the form of Teoscar Hernandez and Kyle Tucker.
But in watching all of their toughest plays and miscues from 2026, Tucker and Hernandez made far fewer mistakes this year than De Paula did. I counted 10 or so poor plays between them, even though the two of them have played nearly 2,000 innings combined this year compared to De Paula’s 841.
So even giving JDP the benefit of the doubt, we might be looking at misplays at a rate 4-5 times higher than what we already see in the corners. I think that’s potentially tolerable as growing pains in 2027, but they’re also unlikely to risk it in the playoffs right this moment.
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Baseball Prospectus: Andrew Friedman and the Dodgers check in at #2 behind Matt Arnold and the Brewers in their front office rankings. That’s mostly because of the recent free agent flops of the Dodgers.
If it was just Tucker, maybe I could still countenance putting them as the top front office. But a bunch of their other recent free agent signings have gone very poorly. The Edwin Díaz deal looks nearly as catastrophic as Tucker’s in evaluation if not quite in scope, and they keep signing the wrong bullpen arms in general. The second Teoscar Hernández deal went south nearly immediately. Blake Snell has barely pitched as a Dodger. These are the types of deals that the Brewers and Rays rarely sign, and perhaps they would if they had the money the Guggenheim-era Dodgers do. But we can’t judge the hypothetical, and the reality is the Dodgers have made a bunch of splashy yet crappy free agent moves lately.
Yeah, I get it, but those hypotheticals aren’t really hypothetical given Friedman’s history. At least to me, it seems clear he’s making signings now he wouldn’t have touched even earlier in his Dodgers tenure (much less with the Rays) simply because the team is trying to do right by Shohei Ohtani with the financial windfall that his bargain contract has netted the team.
In a way, I also think having constraints almost makes it easier for front offices to look good on paper via a reduction in pressure and expectations. Aggressive trades and free agent deals are inherently the biggest risks from a value perspective, and financial constraints give front offices built-in excuses to not pursue them even if doing so results in playoff failure. Meanwhile, front offices from teams in World Series or bust mode don’t have the luxury to be conservative and have it get justified by onlookers with the reasoning that they have to think about sustainability or whatever else.
Point being, we know Friedman can do a similar job to what Arnold is doing because he proved it with the Rays. We also know that if you give him a budget, he can create a dynasty. However, we don’t know if Arnold can do what Friedman is doing with more resources, or if he’ll do what his predecessor David Stearns is currently doing with the Mets. It’s the same job, but not really.
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Baseball America: Elijah Hainline was named as one of 10 sleepers among NL position player prospects, hinting at a potential utility role for the Dodgers.
Hainline could fall into the same category in 2027. He hit .245/.389/.395 over 109 games with Double-A Tulsa this season—good for a 114 wRC+—but his underlying data says there might be more here. A combination of elite swing decisions and average power with good angles could lead to more production in the future.
Hainline posted a 16.6% chase rate with a 73.8% heart-swing rate, numbers indicative of advanced swing decisions. His power is average, as he posted a 104.9 mph 90th percentile exit velocity and 44.8% hard-hit rate while showing the ability to pull the ball in the air fairly regularly.
Throughout the year, I have enjoyed finding out about even more guys the Dodgers have in their system who have MLB profiles that just get completely overlooked because of the amount of attention on the high-end notables.
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For those who wonder why such an emphasis is placed on stuff over command, OpenCommand shows it’s mostly mathematical at this point.
Doesn’t mean it’s a one-size-fits-all solution, but developmentally speaking, you’re gonna prioritize one over the other.
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For the 20th anniversary of the 4+1 Game, the Dodgers did a mini-documentary, basically.
