The Los Angeles Dodgers and their Player Development Machine
The Los Angeles Dodgers can already outspend nearly every other team in baseball and yet every year it seems that they have a player come out of nowhere to be a superstar. How does this keep happening and who is poised to be next?
The Dodgers have been the class of the National League for a while now with six straight NL West titles and two straight World Series appearances. They have this success in a number of ways. They draft players well, they develop players well and they spend money on the right players. Their core players are home-grown and they avoided selling them off when they were prospects. One constant of course has been their ace starting pitcher, Clayton Kershaw, and it looks like they may have found a new ace in Walker Buehler as well.
A big reason for the Dodgers’ success has obviously been their willingness to spend at or above the competitive balance tax threshold for years. The team even blew past the $200 million every year of their current division title run up until this past year where they pushed up to the tax threshold while staying under for the first time in years. Having this kind of money helps a team in many ways. They can pay for the big free agents, they can take more risks as they are able to absorb bad contracts, and they can keep their superstars like Kershaw.
The other thing that big money can do is improve the organization off the field. Spending money on scouting, research and data are new ways that big market clubs are flexing their financial muscle. Through these new mediums, the Dodgers and teams like them, such as the Yankees and Astros, can better find players out of obscurity and develop them into superstars. The Dodgers seem to do this better than anyone and they have a player pretty much every year break out from nowhere. Let’s take a look at some of their breakout stars and see how they got to this point:
Justin Turner
The first major coup for the Dodgers came when they signed utility infielder Justin Turner to a minor league contract before the 2014 season. Turner went on to have a breakout season in 2014 and has developed into one of the game’s best hitters. While the Dodgers have benefited greatly from Turner’s unlocked potential, it is hard to give the Dodgers too much credit for how Turner has developed.
Turner worked meticulously on his swing during the off-season before the 2014 season with former teammate, Marlon Byrd, and independent hitting instructor, Doug Latta. He incorporated a bigger leg kick in his swing in an attempt to better adjust his weight moving forward toward the ball. His aim was to attack the baseball out in front rather than letting the ball carry deeper into the strike zone. He also aimed to get the ball in the air more by swinging with more of an uppercut bat path, thus improving his launch angle. Turner has worked hard to perfect his approach and now boasts one of the best offensive profiles in all of baseball. Credit the Dodgers for accepting how Turner approaches the art of hitting and not trying to change him as many other teams would have.
Turner is a good example of a player profile that a lot of teams are looking for now. Turner had strong contact skills even before he broke out into a super star. Turner carried a 12.83% strikeout rates through over 3100 professional plate appearances leading up to his 2014 campaign. Players with exceptional contact skills have shown that they can adjust their swings to add more power without sacrificing a whole lot of contact.
Chris Taylor
The Dodgers reached the World Series in 2017 for the first time since they won it all back in 1988, in no small part due to the emergence of Chris Taylor. Taylor’s path to stardom was similar to Turner’s in that he had previously been a utility infielder that was more of a AAAA player rather than a full-time starter. After getting traded to the Dodgers in 2016 amidst another mediocre season, Taylor decided to change everything. He knew what he was doing wasn’t working so he decided to seek out a private hitting instructor just like Justin Turner did.
Taylor worked with hitting guru and Dodgers consultant, Craig Wallenbrock, and Robert Von Scoyoc who has since been hired as the team’s hitting coach. They showed Taylor that by increasing his launch angle and getting the ball in the air he could become a great hitter rather than the low-ceiling, slap hitter he had been to that point in his career. The results have been staggering. Taylor increased his average launch angle from 14 degrees from 2015-2016 to 18 degrees since and all it did was raise his batting average from .187 to .270, his slugging percentage from .277 to .470, and his xwOBA from .264 to .333. Taylor risked it all by overhauling his swing, but the reward has been even sweeter than he could have imagined.
You can start to see the Dodger’s impact on its players with the emergence of Chris Taylor. Sure he is the one that sought help from a private hitting instructor, but it was an instructor who was already working for the Dodgers as a consultant. The Dodgers facilitated Taylor’s improvement by having a coach such as Wallenbrock in a position for Taylor to seek him out and feel comfortable about doing so. The Dodgers also clearly intend to keep this trend going with their hiring of Wallenbrock disciple, Robert Von Scoyoc. His presence in the Dodgers dugout should allow players like Chris Taylor, Justin Turner and others to keep their approach solid throughout the season.
Max Muncy
Last season’s breakout performer was Max Muncy. Muncy had been released by the A’s before the 2017 season began. After a month without a job, the Dodgers signed him to a minor league deal and he played in AAA for the remainder of the year. 2018 was a different story however, as Muncy anchored the Dodgers lineup for much of the season with both Justin Turner and Corey Seager missing significant chunks of the year. Muncy even finished the year as the fifth best hitter in baseball with a 162 wRC+.
Muncy doesn’t have the same story as Turner or Taylor. He didn’t seek out the advice of a hitting guru. He worked with his dad to make some adjustments and regain his confidence. While some of the adjustments were physical, it was mostly a mental re-calibration. He got his confidence back and worked on his mechanical adjustments during the 2017 season and it prepared him for what he became in 2018, a hitting monster.
Even before Muncy became one of the best hitters in the game, he had an excellent eye at the plate. He carried a robust 14% walk rate through 2600 professional plate appearances before his breakout 2018 campaign. While Muncy was able to increase that rate to 16.4% in 2018, it was his production on pitches inside the strike zone that really made the difference. Muncy improved across the board on pitches in the zone in 2018 compared to his previous seasons. His batting average on such pitches improved from .225 to .290, his slugging percentage went from .394 to a massive .687 and his xwOBA improved from .284 to .391. Whether intentional or not, his launch angle on batted balls in the zone also increased from 16.3 degrees to 21.8. Muncy is another example of a player that got significantly better while with the Dodgers. While it can be hard to determine what role the Dodgers played in Muncy’s improvement, they were clearly able to help him get his confidence back and become one of the games best hitters.
Connor Joe
Finding the player who could be the next one to join this breakout group was not particularly difficult. Most people probably aren’t familiar with the name Connor Joe, but baseball fans in Cincinnati should learn his name very quick in 2019. Connor Joe was a first-round pick by the Pittsburgh Pirates back in 2014 but never gained much momentum as a prospect. He was traded to the Braves in 2017 for Sean Rodriguez and then traded again to the Dodgers for cash after a disastrous stint with the Braves. Joe showed more promise in the upper minors in 2018 with the Dodgers than he had at any other point in his minor league career. He was so good in fact that the Reds snatched him up in the rule 5 draft back in December. The Reds will give him a shot to play all over the field and see how well his bat plays in the big leagues. There is even some talk that they may try him some behind the plate, a position he hasn’t played since college.
So how did a guy in relative obscurity come to be worthy of a rule 5 pick? A swing change of course. After his miserable 2017 season, Joe realized that he needed to make a change. He worked on starting with a more open stance and then narrowing his stance as the pitcher was in his delivery. He also changed his approach to be more pull-oriented. This coupled with a logical trend toward putting the ball in the air should play well for Joe in Cincinnati.
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The fact that Joe is the player to make these changes and improvements should not be a total shock as he shares some traits with the other names we’ve discussed. To this point in his career, he has been an excellent contact hitter like Justin Turner and Chris Taylor before him. Contact skills can be hard to teach, but revamping a players swing toward more power is much easier, especially if given a strong baseline for contact. Joe also showed a good eye at the plate like Chris Taylor and Max Muncy. While he doesn’t quite have Muncy’s plate discipline or his raw power potential, you can still see the ingredients in Joe’s stat sheet for a productive player.
Obviously, not all of these success stories are directly related to active developmental work by the Dodgers, but something is going on here. First, it appears that the Dodgers might be targeting a certain kind of player in smaller transactions as all of these players have a few skills in common. They all have good to elite contact skills and solid to superb plate discipline before they become stars. These are just a few examples as well. I haven’t even mentioned fourth rounder turned NL Rookie of the Year, Cody Bellinger, or Gavin Lux who was a first round pick by the team in 2016, but was never supposed to be an impact player and has turned himself into a monster.
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The Los Angeles Dodgers have been the leading force in player development across the league. Whether it’s their willingness to allow players to seek outside instruction, their hiring of former independent hitting guru, Robert Von Scoyoc, or the way they acquire players, the Dodgers are clearly doing this better than the rest of the game. If the Dodgers can keep having this kind of success on low-cost assets, they will be able to flex their financial muscle in other areas and continue to dominate the National League for years to come.