Dodgers Digest Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Blog
The Dodgers made six more roster cuts yesterday, reassigning Corey Seager, Darnell Sweeney, Chris O’Brien, Buck Britton, and Shawn Zarraga to minor league camp, and optioning Scott Schebler. With the majors side of things now sitting at 44 players — including the injured Chris Withrow and Brandon Beachy — the Dodgers now effectively have 17 more cuts to make, but there’s still plenty of time for shuffling to go on.
The cuts also had little to do with performance, as three of the best performers thus far in Spring Training were among the cuts. Second baseman, outfielder, and sometimes shortstop Sweeney was reassigned despite posting a .438/.474/.875/1.349 line with two homers. Corner outfielder Scott Schebler and his .400/.429/.900/1.329 line, along with two homers, was also cut, as was Seager and a .333/.526/.500/1.026 line of his own with six walks to five strikeouts. None were going to make the team, but all made strong cases that they should be in consideration for a promotion sometime soon. Sweeney is defensive improvement away from convincing me that maybe he could be a regular at second base, Schebler would probably already be getting a look as a reserve if he wasn’t on the Dodgers, and Seager is making it awfully hard for me to justify my earlier position that he clearly needs a bit more seasoning in the minors. I think I said something about improving his plate discipline? Well, he’s looked extremely calm and patient at the plate this spring, and if it carries over to his AA/AAA season … I mean, who knows?
Britton (.308/.357/.308/.665), Zarraga (.250/.400/.250/.650), and O’Brien (.200/.200/.400/.600) are all just depth in case of some massive catastrophic run of injuries, but just being in camp shows that the team does think of them as useful organizational depth.
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At this point the Dodgers are saying Joc Pederson is going to start in center without actually saying the words.
“We think Joc’s really good defensively,” Mattingly said. “He gets good jumps on the ball. He’s shown us that he knows where to throw it. As far as game awareness, outs and situations, he’s been good.
“Really, his whole game is like that, from the standpoint of the way he runs the bases. He’s shown us game awareness and that’s really what you like. You look at the whole baseball player, not just the talent.”
I understand the thought process, but it’s not like guys don’t know the score.
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And this happened:
