The rationale behind the Dodgers spending 17 of 19 draft picks on pitchers

Pitcher after pitcher after pitcher. The MLB amateur draft was a three-day binge and pitchers were grabbed faster than at a brewpub happy hour.

The Dodgers took pitchers with 17 of their 19 picks in the 20-round, three-day draft that ended July 13. The San Francisco Giants took pitchers in the first nine rounds and 14 overall. The Angels drafted pitchers with all 20 picks. The Cleveland Indians grabbed 19.

As the draft unfolded, a thought occurred to Dodgers vice president of amateur scouting Billy Gasparino.

Was Will Rhymes, the Dodgers director of player development, freaking out at the dearth of position players he’d have available to populate the lower end of the farm system?

“I consulted with Will and he was fine with it,” Gasparino said.

The Dodgers had already signed a number of international position players and planned to sign free agents that weren’t selected in the draft, which was only five rounds in 2020 but normally is 40 rounds.

Furthermore, the Dodgers plan to sign as many of their drafted pitchers as possible and, yes, there will be a place for all of them in the farm system.

“Seventeen pitchers is about what we’d take in a 40-round draft,” Gasparino said. “Some we’ll shut down until instructional league because they’ve already thrown a lot of innings this year. There will be a place for them all next spring.”

The run on pitchers made sense for several reasons. Homegrown starting pitchers are the most valuable commodity in baseball and there was a glut of college pitchers because of last year’s abbreviated draft. Everybody knows the Angels are desperate for pitching and the Indians have had a rash of injuries to starters that probably made them appreciate the opportunity to stock up on arms.

That was part of the Dodgers’ rationale as well, although obviously no one they drafted two weeks ago is ready to fill holes left by injuries to starters Dustin May and Clayton Kershaw and the repulsive behavior of Trevor Bauer.

“It just kind of kept happening and happening and you look up at the total and you’re like, ‘Oh, my god, we took all pitchers,’” Gasparino said.

The Dodgers stayed true to form in some respects: They drafted high school pitchers early — left-hander Maddux Bruns in the first round and right-hander Peter Heubeck in the third — then tabbed three pitchers whose stock was depressed because of injury.

And they didn’t stray from the gospel of advanced analytics, identifying pitchers with exceptional spin rates even if their performance was relatively pedestrian.

“We were focused on talent,” Gasparino said. “We thought it was very clear in favor of the pitching.”

So far, Bruns has signed for $2.2 million — about $250,000 under slot — and ninth-round pick Lael Lockhart of Arkansas and 10th-round pick Michael Hobbs of St. Mary’s each signed for $2,500 even though slot was nearly $150,000.

Lockhart, 23, was a fifth-year senior with no negotiating leverage and Hobbs is just now pitching after missing a full year recovering from Tommy John surgery.

One player the Dodgers definitely won’t sign is 20th-round pick Charlie Connolly of the Naval Academy. Connolly chose to fulfill his active-duty service commitment immediately. The Dodgers have about $2.5 million left to spread among the other 15 unsigned players they drafted.

Dodgers scouts, like others across baseball, had difficulty evaluating the improvement of hitters after college and high school teams missed nearly an entire year because of the pandemic. Therefore, the Dodgers and others simply declined to draft them.

And when the Dodgers finally did, in the 16th round, they tabbed a shortstop with pitching bloodlines. Michael Sirota, from the Gunnery School in Washington, Conn., is the great-nephew of Hall of Fame left-hander Whitey Ford.