At long last, baseball is back. And for the Los Angeles Dodgers, whose Spring Training began this week in Arizona, that means the start of one of the most hyped-up campaigns in franchise history.
While the majority of the attention heading into the season will be on veteran stars Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, there are several young players within the organization who could make an impact as well. Let’s take a look at three Dodgers prospects to look out for in 2024.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto
Okay, this one feels a bit like cheating. It’s hard to really consider a 25 year-old who just signed a 12-year, $325 million contract a prospect. Yamamoto should make an immediate impact with the Dodgers, and projects to be one of the team’s top starting pitchers in 2024.
However, Yamamoto has played his entire professional career to date in Japan, and he has yet to actually appear in an MLB game. Thus, according to MLB’s own standards, Yamamoto is still considered a prospect—albeit a very expensive one.
In a funny twist, the Dodgers will open the 2024 season with a two-game series in Seoul, South Korea, against the San Diego Padres—hence, there is a good chance that Yamamoto’s MLB debut will come across the ocean, further delaying his highly-anticipated first start on U.S. soil.
Kyle Hurt
2023 saw several of the Dodgers’ top young pitchers, including Bobby Miller and Emmet Sheehan, graduate from prospect status into roster mainstays. One young arm who remained in the minors for the vast majority of the season, however, was Kyle Hurt.
A name many USC fans should be familiar with, Hurt was selected in the fifth round of the 2020 MLB Draft by the Miami Marlins. In February of 2021, however, he was traded to Los Angeles in the same deal in which the Dodgers acquired reliever Alex Vesia.
After working his way through the team’s farm system over the course of three seasons, Hurt made his MLB debut in September of 2023, pitching two scoreless innings of relief in a win over the San Diego Padres. However, that turned out to be Hurt’s only big league appearance of the season, as he was optioned back to Triple-A Oklahoma City shortly thereafter. While Hurt will likely open the 2024 campaign in Oklahoma City, expect to hear his name called back up to Los Angeles at some point during the year.
Diego Cartaya
After signing with the Dodgers as a young international free agent from Venezuela, Cartaya, now 22 years old, has spent the past five seasons as a catcher in Los Angeles’s farm system. Cartaya impressed at the lower levels of the minors over his first few seasons, and spent the entire 2023 campaign with Double-A Tulsa.
Cartaya’s first full season in Double-A was an inconsistent one. Although he had some big moments, hitting 19 home runs to go along with 57 RBIs, the young catcher batted just .189 on the season.
With Will Smith entrenched as one of the best catchers in baseball and Austin Barnes a consistent backup option, it appears unlikely that we will see Cartaya reach the majors in 2024. However, his name is definitely one to watch moving forward, as Los Angeles believes he could be a large part of the franchise’s future plans.