What Does The 2015 Draft Mean?

Bruce Thorson-USA TODAY Sports

Well, now that the draft is over, we can write all of the hot take thinkpieces about what this draft means for the team. Regardless, the draft is over and the Dodgers’ first draft under Billy Gasparino was very different from what we’re accustomed to seeing as Dodger fans.

The Dodgers took 42 players, 33 of which went to some kind of college. That’s a whopping 78.5%, and far above anything the Dodgers did in previous years under Logan White’s tenure as farm director. Gasparino said the following:

"“We aren’t opposed to high school. It was more a value play. The money had to be right, and most of the ones that appealed to us were in the $900,000 to $1 million range. We weren’t crazy about doing that.”"

Regardless what the intentions were, this draft happened, and it will affect not only perception of future drafts, but it will affect the team’s behavior this upcoming Summer.

Under Logan White, even when the Dodgers took a college pitcher in the first round, it was your Chris Anderson type. The one that still had some sort of refining to do, the sort that was projectable, the sort almost without polish. You’d be hard pressed to find a pitcher that Logan White took who was as polished as Walker Buehler from Vanderbilt.

Let me preface this with the fact that I absolutely love this draft, the fact that college pitchers are far easier to project than prep pitchers mixed in with the idea that the Dodgers system is already overloaded with high upside talent, makes it an easy decision to round out the farm with solid college talent right before the July 2nd talent infusion.

But the selection of college pitching that has upside, but is also relatively close to the majors allows the Dodgers to do a few things that they weren’t able to before:

Have a surplus of pitching prospects who could be ready at some point next year

So with 2 advanced college arms in the system, the Dodgers -by next year- could have Julio Urias, Jose De Leon, Chris Anderson, Kyle Funkhouser, and Walker Buehler as rotation options at some point with Zach Lee, Ross Stripling, and Joe Wieland potentially available as well depending on health/need for them.

This isn’t how it works, obviously, some will be hurt, some will stall in development, and some won’t be in the organization. The first two are somewhat unpredictable, but the last point is what makes the selection of Buehler and Funkhouser even more enticing.

The Dodgers might be more willing to give up a De Leon or a Holmes in a trade

Holmes has a 3.22 ERA and a 3.36 FIP in his first season of full season ball. He’s 19 and striking out 11.69 of the batters he’s faced this season and might not be that far away from the Cal League if he keeps this up. Jose De Leon has started 4 games in AA and has been excellent in 3 of them, while his last start was a disaster, he’s been really really good in his other appearances to the tune of a , and totally blew away the Cal League.

These are excellent trade chips at the trade deadline, and who knows, if you wanna dream about starting up talks for a Johnny Cueto and Aroldis Chapman trade without Julio Urias, these two names are the two that begin the conversation. If Cole Hamels is to be had without one of the Dodgers top 2 prospects, Holmes and De Leon are the two that might intrigue Amaro enough to get a conversation going.

Giving up these two high end talents would have been difficult if the backup plan was to pray that Chris Anderson can throw enough strikes to be a starter and hope that Urias would be ready to start next season as soon as somebody went down, but with more options, the Dodgers can afford to look around and explore more and more scenarios at the trade deadline.

These are two important ramifications, and hell the Dodgers might not get a Cueto or a Hamels, they might just get a Samardzija or a Kazmir and keep all of the pitching depth and laugh at the league when they get Yadier Alvarez. The point is, with more pitching ready sooner, the Dodgers have options and that’s never ever a bad thing with this front office