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It’s prospect season, which is handy with limited other MLB news happening during a lockout. Just this week, we’ve had top 100 (or 101) lists across the sport from Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus, and BP unveiled their top 10 Dodgers prospects as well.
We’ve also continued our series of community prospect rankings, with a profile from David Hood on outfielder James Outman, the recent 40-man addition who checks in at the True Blue LA No. 10 prospect on the team.
So it’s only right that we start our Saturday morning links with a few more notes about Dodgers prospects.
Links
- Andy Pages is one of 15 players identified by Baseball America as finishing just outside the top 100 prospects in MLB. “Blessed with plus power and on-base ability, further refinement of his approach and bat-to-ball skills could see Pages make a rapid ascent up the Top 100,” wrote Geoff Pontes. Also included in said article is a list of all 103 unlisted players who received at least one BA vote to be in the top 100, which included Pages, Landon Knack, and Eddys Leonard.
- Ben Badler picked 12 prospects who could break into next year’s top 100 list. Included among them is Knack, who was drafted by the Dodgers in the second round in 2020. “His plus changeup helps him keep hitters off balance and neutralize lefties, with a solid pair of breaking balls between his slider and curveball rounding out his arsenal,” writes Badler.
- MLB is planning to try automated balls and strikes in some Triple-A stadiums in 2022, says the Associated Press. The Oklahoma City Dodgers are among at least 11 teams for which the league has posted a hiring notice for employees to operate the automated system, which has been experimented previously in the independent Atlantic League and Arizona Fall League.
- The major league general manager job isn’t what it used to be, writes Jim Alexander at the Orange County Register.
- Mookie Betts is getting into online gaming.
- As nostalgic as I am for Johnny Bench spray paint commercials — “No runs, no drips, no errors” — I like the proposal by Ben Clemens at FanGraphs to alter the standard baseball line score. “So let’s end the tyranny of the error and remove it from line scores. Let’s replace it with something better, and get walks in there while we’re at it,” Clemens writes.