Dodgers Way
FanSided

Dodgers fans will love Diego Cartaya’s latest tweet (and massive homer)

By Adam Weinrib|
Diego Cartaya, Chase Barbary, and Cannon Barbary, watch a video on Chase's phone in the Barbary family's kitchen, Thursday, June 25, 2020. Cartaya, a catcher in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization, who met Chase Barbary, also a catcher in the organization, while playing in the Arizona rookie league, was taken in by the Barbary family after the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the United States and he was unable to return to his home country of Venezuela.Diegobarbaryfamily Mb2 06252020
Diego Cartaya, Chase Barbary, and Cannon Barbary, watch a video on Chase's phone in the Barbary family's kitchen, Thursday, June 25, 2020. Cartaya, a catcher in the Los Angeles Dodgers organization, who met Chase Barbary, also a catcher in the organization, while playing in the Arizona rookie league, was taken in by the Barbary family after the COVID-19 pandemic arrived in the United States and he was unable to return to his home country of Venezuela.Diegobarbaryfamily Mb2 06252020

The Los Angeles Dodgers have done the impossible in the modern game: developed too many catchers.

Everywhere else throughout the baseball world, MLB teams are struggling to find backstops with both tangibles and intangibles. There are a few defensive stalwarts and a few big-time sluggers, but it’s nearly impossible these days to find the total package — and, let’s face it, there isn’t even much competence.

The Dodgers? That’s an entirely unfamiliar concept to them. LA has a young star in Will Smith who seems likely to be entrenched behind the plate for quite a while, as well as a perfectly competent backup in Austin Barnes. They did such an excellent job developing both Smith and top prospect Keibert Ruiz that they were finally forced to cash in their Ruiz chip last summer in the Max Scherzer trade.

Now, here comes Diego Cartaya, just 20 years old and now the next man up on the Dodgers’ catching totem pole. He seems poised to take Ruiz’s mantle and push back LA’s timeline for assessing Smith’s future in the uniform, too.

And he’s made his mark this spring — untethered by 40-man concerns — by smashing home runs over everything in Arizona.

Dodgers catcher Diego Cartaya is destroying baseballs with a Mamba Mentality

We hesitate to call anything a “mood,” but … Cartaya absolutely crushing baseballs out of the zip code appears to be a mood.

A breakout for the 20-year-old Cartaya was easy to predict last year as he paired stunning exit velocity numbers with excellent counting numbers, too. The teenager drilled 10 homers and knocked in 31 runs in 31 games, posting a 1.023 OPS at Single-A Rancho Cucamonga (and batting .298 in the process).

Cartaya certainly seems to be worth the $2.5 million it took to sign him out of Venezuela, and looks poised in a year or two to create the same difficult conversation Ruiz once did: now that the Dodgers have two potential star catchers, how do they reconcile the depth chart?

The kid isn’t quite knocking on the door yet, but he’s ready to grind in the interim, drawing inspiration from a Los Angeles legend in the process.

Kobe Bryant and Diego Cartaya: two extreme natural talents who burst onto the scene, a cut above, at an extremely young age.

Only a matter of time until he inserts himself in the conversation a little louder — or inserts a home run ball into a windshield across the street.

Home/Dodgers Prospects

Schedule