MLB Draft: Review of Dodgers first-year pitcher assignments

Walker Buehler did not pitch after he was drafted because he had Tommy John surgery. He threw his first professional pitch in 2016, his second year with the Dodgers.

But what about the rest of the Dodger pitchers signed after the 2014-2017 drafts, where did they go and how much did they pitch? That is what I wanted to look at today.

Here is the second part of the review of first year Dodgers player assignments, chronicling the pitchers from the 2014-2017 drafts. We took a look at position player assignments on Wednesday.

In the last four years, the Dodgers have drafted and signed 76 pitchers. Sixty were from four-year colleges or universities, 10 were from high school and six were from junior college programs.

Every pitcher but one made his professional debut on one of the Dodgers Rookie-level teams. Every pitcher drafted out of high school only played on the Rookie-level teams in his first year, same as the position players. Only Grant Holmes pitched for both Rookie-level teams in the AZL and Pioneer League. The other ones stayed in the AZL.

Fifteen college pitchers advanced to Class-A level. Two — Josh Sborz and Mitchell White — pitched for Rancho Cucamonga in the California League.

The workload for a drafted pitcher was somewhat stable through 2015. Four of the five highest innings pitched totals in the last four years came from college pitchers drafted in 2015, pitching 53⅔ , 52, 51⅔ and 47 innings.

Holmes pitched the fourth-most — 48⅓ innings — much more than any other pitcher out of high school in the last four years.

In 2016, no pitcher had more than 31⅔ innings in his first year, and only three reached 30 innings pitched. In 2014, seven pitchers pitched at least 32⅔ innings, and in 2015 there were 10 pitchers who equaled or topped that amount.

So don’t fret if you don’t see one of the pitchers drafted this year piling up the innings in Arizona, Utah or somewhere in the Midwest this summer, that is likely all part of the plan.