Baseball America update reinforces Dodgers farm's insane dominance post-Tarik Skubal trade

When the Los Angeles Dodgers acquired Tarik Skubal, they sent the Detroit Tigers a top-50 prospect, a legitimate starter who had been derailed by injuries, and another legitimate prospect, though one who didn’t appear on any top-100 lists. Somehow it barely dented anything. The acquisition of Skubal was huge, but the big story is how much was left behind despite trading a lot for one player. 

In Baseball America’s final reshuffle of their top-100 lists, the Dodgers still had seven names on the list. Seven! That’s after giving up Zyhir Hope and River Ryan. That’s not a typo either, and it’s not a fluke. It’s just how the farm system operates these days.

The Dodgers prospects that stuck around tell the real story

The headliner is Josue De Paula, who Baseball America lists as the fourth-best prospect in all of baseball and one of the few outfield bats in baseball scouts will compare to a true middle-of-the-order force. You don’t have to go very far to find Eduardo Quintero at 16 and Mike Sirota at 19, giving the Dodgers three outfielders inside the top-20. Remember, there are 30 teams. If it was just those three, it would be a strong system. 

The big riser is Christian Zazueta, who jumped from 50 to 24. Zazueta is a righty with some absurd numbers. He has struck out 39 and walked two in 24 Double-A innings since his promotion. He’s given up some runs, but the peripherals are so good that he went from being largely unknown before the season to a top-25 prospect now.

Emil Morales, still a teenager in High-A, checks in at 29. He’s holding his own and then some at shortstop. He’s the final of five players in the top-29. There are 12 teams that don’t have a single player ranked in the top-29, and the Dodgers have five players. You do have to go a bit farther down the list to find the final two. Zach Root is 67th, and Charles Davalan is at 89. They were picked with consecutive picks in the 2025 draft, both out of the University of Arkansas.

Root was the story of the organization’s Spring Breakout game and has kept climbing since. He works with a fastball-spin combination that handled High-A lineups with no problem. He’s struggled some in a promotion to Double-A, but it’s a small sample. Davalan spent July hitting the ball as hard and as often as anyone in the minors, and he did it without expanding the zone.

Hope, the centerpiece the Dodgers sent to Detroit, climbed in the same update, even though he’s wearing a Tigers uniform now. It confirms the Dodgers gave up a top-40 talent, plus a pitcher with some of the best stuff in all of the minors in Ryan. And their system left it still looking like one of the deepest in all of baseball. 

If anyone thinks this is an accident, it’s certainly not. The package for Skubal was among the biggest rental packages in recent memory, not a bargain-bin heist fans want to believe it was. Andrew Friedman has made a habit of treating the farm system as a renewable resource rather than a finite one, so he can use it to get players he feels his team needs. He restocks through the draft, international signings, and shrewd trades even in years when the big league roster is chasing a title. 

It’s the same approach The Athletic flagged as a stated organizational priority before Skubal ever even officially became available. They replenish first and then worry about who’s available at the deadline. 

Sure, it’s possible that this organization trades from its system every summer and eventually pays for it with a barren farm and no depth to fall back on. That’s not what’s happening now. Seven names on the Top 100 the week after trading three legitimate prospects away isn’t a coincidence, and it isn’t luck. It’s the machine working exactly how it’s supposed to, and the rest of baseball still hasn’t figured out how to slow it down.

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