Dodgers top prospect Michael Busch hottest, most powerful Double-A hitter

Mar 20, 2022; Phoenix, Arizona, USA; Los Angeles Dodgers second baseman Michael Busch (84) falls off balance in the first inning during a spring training game against the Chicago Cubs at Camelback Ranch-Glendale. Mandatory Credit: Rick Scuteri-USA TODAY Sports
Mar 20, 2022; Phoenix, Arizona, USA; Los Angeles Dodgers second baseman Michael Busch (84) falls off balance in the first inning during a spring training game against the Chicago Cubs at Camelback Ranch-Glendale. Mandatory Credit: Rick Scuteri-USA TODAY Sports

You know what’s great about the Dodgers? There’s a seemingly endless supply of Dodgers.

The big-league lineup is stellar, and if Cody Bellinger’s resurgence and Gavin Lux’s emergence are for real, you won’t find a deeper group over the course of a 162-game season. And though the minor-league system has technically slipped in the rankings (due to endless graduations and the Max Scherzer/Trea Turner trade), there still seems to be a remarkable amount of talent below the surface.

Outfielder Andy Pages and slugging third baseman Miguel Vargas have stolen headlines in 2022 for their prodigious power and Pages’ ridiculous gaming skills, but perhaps no prospect has popped more eyeballs than Michael Busch, the potential second baseman of the future and 2019’s first-round selection out of North Carolina.

After being assigned to a second stint in Tulsa to begin the campaign, Busch has now hit eight homers on the season, as well as six dingers in a seven-game stretch over the past two weeks of action.

That hot stretch left him with a 1.214 OPS, the literal highest in the minors out of all players with at least 75 plate appearances. Is the “literal best” good?

Dodgers top prospect Michael Busch one of most powerful hitters in Double-A

The wildest part of this is that he’ll only heat up further when he’s promoted to the Pacific Coast League, where the baseball hits the jet stream and oh, baby, hitters become kings. Most of this, however, is Busch, who’s spectacular at his chosen profession and could seamlessly join a big-league lineup at this very moment.

Oh, he also was asked to handle left field this week for the first time in his professional baseball career, and did it as smoothly as Chris Taylor flipping between second and the outfield.

This certainly went better than the early days of the Gavin Lux Outfield Experience, when he ended up a chalk outline on the center field wall.

Busch has always been a natural hitter. That was never in doubt.

Now, though, the Dodgers have begun his transition to Swiss Army Knife, which means the end of his schooling is near and his big-league tenure is on the horizon.

If his power ceiling is higher than we anticipated, we could really be in for some fun, or — at least — a hot summer.