The Dodgers made the big swing, getting two-time Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal ahead of the trade deadline, solidifying their rotation down the stretch and into October. That part is obvious, but let’s look at what the Dodgers gave up in sending Zyhir Hope, River Ryan, and Brady Smith.
Hope is the headliner here, a consensus top-100 prospect who just had the best month of his professional career, hitting .372/.439/.745 with 10 home runs in July for Double-A Tulsa. He was ranked the No. 20 prospect in baseball
in July by Baseball Prospectus in their updated top-50 list. From Jeffrey Paternostro, Jarrett Seidler, and the BP prospect staff:
Despite the jump to Double-A, he’s stayed within a shout of an average contact rate, and if he can just maintain that going forward, Hope will hit something like 35 homers a year given how hard he hits the ball and how effective he is at pulling and lifting it when he does make contact. His slugging has popped back up above .500 in Double-A as a 21-year-old and he has just enough barrel control (and more than enough strength) that even his bad contact can find holes, and he can drive it oppo and out off the end of the bat.
MLB Pipeline in its midseason update ranked Hope 25th, and Baseball America had him at 55th. But context is key here.
Hope in the Tulsa outfield was playing alongside Josue De Paula, the Dodgers’ top prospect, and Mike Sirota, a fellow top-100 prospect. The Dodgers farm system is full of stellar outfield prospects, including Eduardo Quintero in High-A Great Lakes and the more major-league-ready James Tibbs III and Zach Ehrhard in Triple-A. There won’t be room for all of these outfielders in Los Angeles, even on a staggered timeline. That’s reminiscent of how the Dodgers got Hope in the first place.
Michael Busch was a first-round pick of the Dodgers in 2019 and hit his way into relevance, winning Pacific Coast League MVP in 2023. That offseason the Dodgers signed a guy named Shohei Ohtani, which meant designated hitter was occupied, as was first base with fellow future Hall of Famer Freddie Freeman, and third base with Max Muncy, working his way up franchise home run lists. There was no place for Busch to play in Los Angeles, so they traded him to the Cubs, who needed his bat. Busch in nearly three years with Chicago has 68 home runs and a 124 wRC+, while the Dodgers got Hope and pitcher Jackson Ferris.
That’s how trades are supposed to work, with each team obtaining something they want.
The Dodgers got Ryan in more of an unheralded trade at the end of spring training in 2022. They traded Matt Beaty, who found a role as an extra hitter and occasional pinch-hitter with the Dodgers, but with the universal designated hitter coming to the National League his role was lessened. So Beaty went to the Padres for Ryan, a two-way player in college who batted in 12 games in the Arizona Complex League late in 2021.
With the Dodgers, Ryan switched to pitching full time and thrived, making the majors in 2024. Four starts into his big league career, Ryan needed Tommy John surgery, which wiped out the rest of that season and all of 2025 as well. It also put Ryan into the odd spot of still being a prospect — ranked 55th in the preseason at The Athletic, No. 107 at FanGraphs, and 125th by ESPN — but also about to turn 28 in August.
When on the field, Ryan has thrived this season in Triple-A Oklahoma City, with a 4.46 ERA, 4.24 xERA, and 2.88 FIP, 43 strikeouts against only eight walks and just one home run in 36 1/3 innings. But he’s been sidelined twice by hamstring strains, including the last six-plus weeks on his current IL stint.
Brady Smith was a third-round pick of the Dodgers in 2023, but then Tommy John surgery delayed his pro debut until June 2025. He has a 4.36 ERA and 4.13 FIP in 21 starts this season between Class-A and High-A with a 35.3-percent strikeout rate. Smith was second in the Dodgers minors in both strikeout rate and strikeout-minus-walk rate (25.9 percent) to only Christian Zazueta among all pitchers with at least 50 innings.
Smith was just promoted to High-A Great Lakes last week, and at 21 is the third-youngest pitcher on the Loons, only older than fellow starter Sterling Patick and reliever Justin Chambers.
Last week at Baseball America, J.J. Cooper looked at what acquiring an ace at the trade deadline actually cost in recent years. On Sunday morning, Cooper and Geoff Pontes wrote that Hope, Ryan, and Smith to the Tigers is right in line with those other deals in expiring a pending free agent, “but it’s also a prospect cost light enough that the deal seems like a no-brainer for the Dodgers.”
