On almost every day of the year, the Dodgers are operating with more resources than the other 29 MLB teams, not less.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t tell that to Dodgers scouting director Zach Fitzpatrick, though. At least not on draft day. And especially not this year.<\/p>\n
The Dodgers have become accustomed to picking at the back of the first round. As back-to-back World Series champions who are favored to make it a three-peat, they\u2019ve won the NL West 12 of the last 13 seasons and have made the playoffs 13 consecutive years. They haven\u2019t had a single-digit draft pick since 2007 when they just so happened to select future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fitzpatrick has been with the Dodgers since November 2015 and became the team\u2019s scouting director ahead of the 2023 draft. In the 10 drafts he\u2019s been with the organization, the team has picked no earlier than 20th in the first round.\u00a0Since the 2021 draft, he and the Dodgers scouting department have also had to deal with both the lost-pick penalties that come with signing high-profile free agents and the 10-spot penalty that comes when a team spends beyond the second tax threshold of the CBA.<\/p>\n
But the 2026 draft represents a new extreme in limited draft capital for the Dodgers, who have just six picks in the first 10 rounds.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re a little bit used to it at this point,\u201d Fitzpatrick told Baseball America. \u201cObviously, this pick structure is more extreme than we\u2019ve had.\u201d<\/p>\n
In December, Los Angeles lost its second- and fifth-round picks by signing free agent Edwin D\u00edaz to a three-year, $69 million deal. Then in January, they lost their third- and sixth-round picks by signing Kyle Tucker to a four-year, $240 million deal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Those pick losses, combined with being docked 10 spots for their first-round pick, mean the Dodgers will make just two picks within the first six rounds, the first coming at No. 40 overall and the next at No. 132. Since bonus pool money is tied to slot values in baseball\u2019s draft, that also means LA will have just $3,951,900 in bonus pool funds to work with. That\u2019s the smallest bonus pool of the draft and $1.59 million less than the Blue Jays, who have the second-smallest bonus pool.<\/p>\n
Excluding the pandemic-shortened 2020 draft, only two teams in draft history have had as few picks inside the first 10 rounds as this year\u2019s Dodgers. The 1981 Angels and the 2002 Rangers both had just six picks after losing their round 2-5 selections because of free agent signings.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn a lot of ways, we\u2019re used to the challenge of trying to do more in the draft with less, which our guys really embrace and take a lot of pride in,\u201d Fitzpatrick said. \u201cOur job is to produce major league value and impact, so that kind of focus never changes. I think with fewer picks and dollars, you definitely have smaller room for error. It puts an emphasis on precision and the execution of those picks, which is really important to us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The first 22 picks in this year\u2019s draft come with higher individual slot values than the total bonus pool LA will have to work with for 16 rounds of picks. If the Dodgers choose to push to the full 5% overage that comes before pick penalties trigger\u2014something they do regularly\u2014it will give them just under $4.15 million to work with.<\/p>\n
Despite their early-round disadvantages, the Dodgers have made a habit out of finding big league value with later picks in recent seasons. They drafted three big leaguers after the first round in 2020 in Landon Knack<\/a>, Clayton Beeter<\/a> and Gavin Stone<\/a> while also boasting hits like Emmet Sheehan<\/a> (2021, sixth round) and Dalton Rushing<\/a> (40th overall, 2022) more recently.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n The strength of the 2026 draft could work in the Dodgers\u2019 favor as they attempt to add to that list.<\/p>\n While many players inside the first round haven\u2019t made the sorts of strides that teams picking at the top<\/a> would have hoped, the depth of the class<\/a> is perceived as a real strength. There are appealing profiles in all sorts of different demographics as teams begin to line up players for their second, third, fourth and fifth picks.\u00a0<\/p>\n Or, if you\u2019re the 2026 Dodgers, your first and second picks.<\/p>\n Fitzpatrick and the Dodgers are remaining open-minded about any profile given that depth and the uncertainty that comes from picking later.<\/p>\n \u201cRather than trying to shortcut, \u2018Hey,,this type of demographic doesn\u2019t really work for us,\u2019 we\u2019ve taken high schoolers, we\u2019ve taken proven college performers, we\u2019ve taken college pitchers,\u201d Fitzpatrick said. \u201cWe\u2019ve kind of dabbled in every area, and I think that\u2019s a credit to trying to stay open-minded, at least early. Obviously, as we whittle down, like all teams, we\u2019ll narrow our focus and try to collect as many important pieces of information as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n Even with the extreme lack of picks and smaller bonus pool, the team hasn\u2019t changed how it\u2019s operating this spring. The Dodgers are casting a wide net and trusting their area scouts to dive deep on players and be comfortable with their backgrounds, makeup and player development arcs, while also folding in data and feedback their analysts bring to the table.\u00a0<\/p>\n Handling the uncertainty about which players will actually get to them at the 40th and 132nd picks is pretty straightforward. There\u2019s no real meta-game being played in an attempt to try to eliminate players or project ahead of time who they won\u2019t have a shot at drafting.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re really just focused on lining up our favorite 40 players,\u201d Fitzpatrick said, noting the potential mistakes the team could make in trying to game plan for what other teams might do in front of them. \u201cOur job is to line up our favorite 40 players who we think are going to have the 40 best careers in the big leagues.\u201d<\/p>\n The same is true for their next pick in the fourth round.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re really confident in our ability to do that,\u201d Fitzpatrick said. \u201cCollect information, have really critical conversations at the same level that we would for the 40th-overall pick.<\/p>\n \u201cConfident in our process, our scouting information, our data, our (quantitative analysis) team, everything that we gather from combine to backgrounds to area scout opinions and kind of lean into our information and our process with a lot of belief that we can do that. It might be the 60th player on our board that gets there. It might be the 100th player on the board that gets there. There\u2019s a lot of uncertainty and unknown that could create some issues if you\u2019re trying to predict what other teams are going to do.\u201d<\/p>\n In baseball\u2019s draft, lining up the board is just the first part of the process. It\u2019s not always as simple as taking the top player who\u2019s available on your board. Because the draft is a soft-slotting system, teams also need to make sure the players they want to take are actually signable at a given pick.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s especially important for a team like the Dodgers who, at least in the draft, have precious few extra dollars to move around.\u00a0<\/p>\n In the draft room, it will be an all-hands-on-deck process, with Fitzpatrick relying on the networks and relationships of his entire department to get information on signability as the draft unfolds and the board develops.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have a big draft room for that reason,\u201d Fitzpatrick said. \u201c(We\u2019re) able to step out, make calls, collect information, notate it and deliver it in real-time so that we can try to make the best assessment of the optimization problem of, \u2018Hey, how do you stretch your minimal dollars up the most that we can?’\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On almost every day of the year, the Dodgers are operating with more resources than the other 29…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280126,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2276],"tags":[5,2291,4,1586],"class_list":{"0":"post-680289","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb-draft","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-major-league-baseball-draft","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-mlb-draft"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116442489491767230","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680289\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}