Dodgers notes: Julio Urías’ ascension, Trea Turner’s free agency, Max Muncy’s swing

Julio Urías starts for the Dodgers on Saturday night, having established himself as the ace on a Dodgers team that will win 100 games for the fourth time in six seasons.

He’s on an incredible run, with a 1.94 ERA in his last 15 starts, of which the Dodgers have won 14. Urías has allowed nine total runs in his last 10 starts.

Jorge Castillo of the Los Angeles Times went to Culiacán, Mexico — Urías’ hometown — to visit the pitcher’s family. Castillo’s excellent profile is chock full of interesting nuggets, like Urías having 10 eye surgeries before turning 10, how the left-hander plans to end his career pitching for the Tomateros de Culiacán, plus a response to San Diego hecklers, and how Urías has grown into becoming an ace.

Also included was Urías asked about his 20-game suspension under MLB’s joint domestic violence policy in 2019 after an altercation in a Los Angeles parking lot during which video showed Urías pushed a woman to the ground.

“I don’t even like to talk about it or remember it because they’re very complicated moments in life that you don’t want to see yourself or another person in that situation,” Urías told Castillo. “It was a lesson and I feel like if I have a stain, it’s that one.”

Urías also came up this week when Scott Boras was a guest this week on the Effectively Wild podcast at FanGraphs, with Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley. Among the topics discussed were the upside of an agency and team working together to optimize player performance.

“Andrew Friedman and I talked about Julio Urías,” Boras said. “This guy was a precocious star, and I think collectively we did a great job at getting him where his innings are not anywhere like where he’s throwing 1,000 innings before he was 25 years old.

“He was titrated and managed, and now we’re getting a Cy Young-level performance out of a 25-year-old, exactly how it’s prescribed. He doesn’t have a lot of innings on him. There’s an example of working together to really bring a very beneficial outcome for both team and player.”

Urías, who turned 26 on August 7, leads the National League this season with a 2.30 ERA, and is the only member of the Dodgers opening day rotation to avoid the injured list in 2022. Urías, who now has pitched 577⅓ innings in his career, will be a free agent after the 2023 season at age 27.

Links

• Trea Turner talked about his pending free agency, how he and the Dodgers mutually agreed to not talk contract during the season after initial spring discussions, and the lingering “prefers the east cost” narrative with Bill Plunkett at the Orange County Register.
• Max Muncy talked more about his turnaround this season, and how his step-back move came from trying to mimic Nolan Arenado. “The idea was “all of ours and none of ours at the same time,” Muncy said,” per Plunkett at the OC Register.
• Trayce Thompson’s resurgence with the Dodgers was pored over by Jay Jaffe at FanGraphs, who is a fan of his batted-ball data.
• The Dodgers pitching plan for the postseason is still very much a work in progress, Jack Harris at the LA Times detailed.