Dodgers: What’s Next for Top Prospect Josiah Gray?
With the minor league season back once again, we have the joy of looking at numbers down on the farm and admiring once again the many talented prospects in the Dodgers’ pipeline.
Of course, one of the deepest areas in the organization — even if the struggles at the big league level say otherwise right now — is in pitching. The club has 13 projectable arms in its top 30 prospects list at the moment. And more are sure to come at the mid-season update. However, the most notable name from the last few seasons has been right-hander Josiah Gray.
Earlier this week, Dave Roberts talked about LA’s top pitching prospect and what he likes about the 23-year-old.
“Josiah, he’s come quick. Very live arm, not a whole lot of mileage. Great make up, great body, great head, work ethic… all that.”
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The big question, however, is what comes next for Gray? His name was brought up as soon as the team lost Dustin May for the season. But for Roberts, Jojo still has a few things to work on before he’s fully ready to take a spot in the rotation.
“I think for me, we view him as a starter. [He has] a plus fastball with great characteristics, just continue to work on the command. There’s a lot of arm side miss and when you can clean that up. And the changeup. He’s got a really good changeup that he can go to righties or lefties and just continue to develop the breaking ball and so you know something to strike it, shorten it… As a potential starter, you got to have that three-pitch mixing my opinion. So there’s nothing that Josiah hasn’t been able to dominate when he puts his mind to it. So that’s an easy bet.”
Gray made his first start of the year for Triple-A Oklahoma City on Thursday and struck out a career-high 10 batters over 5 innings pitched. The sky’s the limit for the Dodgers’ 2019 minor league pitcher of the year. It could just be a matter of time before we see him logging big league innings with a club in need of pitching help.
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