Dave Roberts pretty much confirmed darkhorse candidate will make Dodgers roster

When the Dodgers signed Santiago Espinal to a minor league deal a few days after spring training started, no one thought much of it. He had an All-Star season with the Blue Jays in 2022, but he's spent his last two seasons struggling with the Reds, posting a .245 average and .616 OPS there, good for -1.8 bWAR.

At best, Espinal would be a decent enough infield option to stash away in Triple-A and bring up in the event of an emergency.

No one expected that he would explode in spring training. Through seven games, he's hitting .625 with a 1.761 OPS and, earlier this week, Dave Roberts made it sound like Espinal actually had a real chance of making the Opening Day roster.

He escalated his language on Thursday, after Espinal had a two-homer, six-RBI day against the Reds, saying, "It’d be hard to imagine him not being on the team."

It's a welcome surprise for Dodgers fans, who figured that the second base battle really only came down to Hyeseong Kim and Alex Freeland, and a reminder that the Dodgers do have a knack for sniffing out diamonds in the rough.

Santiago Espinal likely to break camp and make Dodgers' Opening Day roster

Roberts said Espinal fits in "seamlessly" with the team, and former Blue Jays teammate Teoscar Hernández is very much in his corner.

With Tommy Edman and Kiké Hernández out (Edman's status is still TBD, while Hernández is shooting to come off of the IL as soon as he's eligible in late May), there are two roster spots available. Kim and Freeland are still very much in play, but it's impossible not to figure that Freeland will end up being the odd man out.

Kim is in Tokyo participating in the World Baseball Classic for Team Korea, but he left Dodgers camp on a heater: .462 average and 1.154 OPS with a homer and five RBI over four games. Freeland is struggling: .167/.707. The top prospect's walk-to-strikeout ratio is exemplary (nine walks, three strikeouts), but it might not be enough to get him onto the roster.

And if Espinal keeps impressing the way he has been, could he steal the starting job from Kim? It's plausible. Roberts' praise has become more and more effusive over the span of just a few days, and depending on how far Korea gets into the WBC, Kim could be out of the Dodgers' direct line of sight for a while longer.