Los Angeles Dodgers: Five Dodgers that will exceed expectations in 2020
By Jason Reed
5. Julio Urias
Before Walker Buehler was the young phenom and future ace of the Los Angeles Dodgers, it was Julio Urias. And while Buehler gets most of the spotlight now, Urias arguably still has the higher ceiling and has not even come close to reaching that ceiling.
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That is a take that I will die on. Julio Urias is special and we are just grazing the surface of how good he can be.
Urias, the former top southpaw prospect in baseball, quietly finished last season with a 2.49 ERA, good enough for the eighth-lowest in all of baseball among pitchers that had at least 70 innings pitched.
Not only was his ERA impressive, but Urias put together borderline elite statcast numbers, which typically are a great indication of how a player should be performing. Urias finished in the 100th percentile in both exit velocity and hard-hit percentage last season.
He also finished in 90th percentile in weighted expected on-base average, which calculates what opposing hitters’ on-base average should be with advanced metrics factored in, the 87th percentile in expected batting average and the 94th percentile in expecting slugging percentage.
Those are elite numbers and are even more impressive considering that he barely turned 23 in August. He is two years younger than Walker Buehler. Let that sink in.
Urias is finally going to get his chance to start in the rotation with shoulder surgery behind him and as long as he can stay healthy and stay on the mound, he is going to blossom into an all-star pitcher in 2020. Yes, an all-star pitcher.
Bold predictions for Mookie Betts in 2020. dark. Next
He and Walker Buehler are going to be the two-headed dragon that is going to carry the Dodgers into a new era and we will start to see a glimpse of that in 2020.