Among the 122 major league outfielders with at least 200 plate appearances entering Friday, Teoscar Hernández (.250/.313/.401, 97 wRC+, 0.4 fWAR) and Kyle Tucker (.232/.327/.368, 95 wRC+, 0.3 fWAR) ranked 87th and 94th, respectively in FanGraphs WAR.
With the Dodgers getting such little production offensively and defensively from the corner outfield this season, calling up one of their many productive minor league outfielders seems more and more appealing by the day.
Dustin Nosler at Dodgers Digest
this week argued for calling up 21-year-old Josue De Paula, the club’s top prospect, directly from Double-A Tulsa.
Geoff Pontes on Hot Sheet podcast at Baseball America acknowledged the rawness of De Paula but suggested that because De Paula will be added to the 40-man roster this November to protect him from the Rule 5 Draft, calling him up now would not fundamentally alter his long-term timeline.
Keith Law at The Athletic is not as high as De Paula, ranking another Dodgers outfielder Eduardo Quintero higher, and said Mike Sirota is a better athlete with a better long-term ceiling. Law was a guest of Jeff Speigel on the Dodger Heads podcast this week and talked De Paula among others, and suggested James Tibbs III as the more feasible Dodgers outfield call-up if they so choose this season.
Links
- Jay Jaffe at FanGraphs expertly chronicled the life of Tommy John, who died last weekend at age 83.
- Former Dodger Talk co-host and now longtime Albuquerque Isotopes play-by-play broadcaster Josh Suchon dug into the history of Tommy John surgery after John’s initial procedure. For instance, the second TJ surgery was on Brent Strom in 1978, three and a half years after John.
- The fine folks at FanGraphs introduced a new feature this week: the count progression tool. “This tool isn’t meant to completely explain shifts in walk and strikeout rates,” wrote Ben Clemens, “but I think it’s a great way to help investigate the ways the game is changing.”
