Los Angeles Dodgers: Three Dodgers who will vastly improve in 2020
By Jason Reed
2. Julio Urias
Julio Urias was the young pitching phenom that was supposed to be the team’s ace of the future long before Walker Buehler made a name for himself in the Dodgers’ farm system and continued by electrifying Dodger fans in the regular season and postseason.
Right now Buehler is undoubtedly the better pitcher and 99 percent of fans would say that his ceiling is higher than Urias’. However, the ceilings of both players are very similar and the duo of Urias and Buehler has legitimate potential to be like Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke in 2015.
I understand the concerns around Urias’ health after his shoulder surgery and the fact that the team has been weary with him since. However, he still set a career-high in innings pitched out of the bullpen last season and actually ranked eighth in the MLB in ERA among pitchers with at least 70 innings pitched.
So Urias was already great last season in the chances he was given but a lot of people may not have realized it. This year, with the departure of Rich Hill and Hyun-Jin Ryu, Urias is going to get plenty more chances in the starting rotation and will be able to back his nasty stuff and solid stats with more outings.
The craziest part about Urias is that he is still extremely young. Urias is 23 and will be 24 in August, which is almost exactly two years younger than Walker Buehler. Urias is only going to get better and this will be the season that we start to see those seeds grow.