Los Angeles Dodgers: Five bold predictions for the starting rotation in 2020
By Jason Reed
3. Julio Urias will be an all-star
I am really high on Julio Urias. In fact, I still think that Urias can easily make the case of being the Los Angeles Dodgers’ best pitcher in five years over Walker Buehler and that is not even a knock on Buehler.
Buehler is more of a sure thing at this point in his career but Urias arguably has the higher ceiling. The Dodgers signed him as a teenager for a reason and as the former top pitching prospect in baseball, we cannot ignore Urias’ massive ceiling. Plus, he is still only 23 years old and already has 184 big-league innings under his belt.
Urias quietly had a very good season in 2019 that got overlooked, even by Dodger fans. Pitching mostly out of the bullpen to limit his innings, Urias finished with a 2.49 ERA and 85 strikeouts in 79 and two-thirds innings.
That gave Urias the ninth best ERA in the big leagues among pitchers with at least 70 innings pitched last season.
All of the advanced things that MLB teams are looking at nowadays are in Urias’ favor. He ranked in the 94th percentile in fastball spin rate in 2019, 82nd percentile in curveball spin rate and the 100th percentile in average exit velocity. He was fourth in the league in soft contact percentage last season.
Urias has everything it takes to be a great starting pitcher in the MLB and with an entire season’s worth of bullpen work, he deserves the nod in the starting rotation to start the year.
Chances are he will not lose that job and he will be the breakout pitcher of the year, reminding Dodger fans that the duo of him and Walker Buehler will dominate the National League for years to come.