Prior to the 2016 season it was known that Los Angeles Dodgers top pitching prospect Julio Urias would make his Major League debut at some point. But how early he joined the club from Triple-A Oklahoma City and the role he played was unexpected.
Urias made his debut on May 27, and after being sent to and from Oklahoma City a couple times, he eventually stuck with the Dodgers. He went 5-2 with a 3.39 ERA, 3.17 FIP and 1.46 WHIP while striking out 84 and walking 31 over 18 games (15 starts).
Injuries, coupled with Urias’ steady improvement as the regular season came to a close, earned him a spot on the Dodgers’ National League Division Series and NL Championship Series rosters.
“This was a great year for him. Developmentally to get up here, we saw in his first stint he struggled a little bit, as you would expect for a young pitching prospect coming up to the Major League level in the middle of a pennant race,” president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said Monday.
“The maturation and ability to make adjustments start-to-start is something that you often see young guys take more time to be able to put in place. There were a lot of very encouraging things, he obviously was a big part of our success, and we were able to build him up in a way that was extremely helpful.”
Urias threw 127.2 total innings on the season between Triple-A and the Majors, postseason included. That was significantly more than his previous career high 87.2 innings pitched, set in 2014.
Friedman wasn’t yet ready to commit to Urias being part of the Dodgers roster on Opening Day of the 2017 season. However, the young left-hander will again work on an innings limit.
“As we look forward, next year we’ll probably still have some type of restriction and things we need to be mindful of,” Friedman said. “This year definitely kind of hit the mark of what we wanted to do. He was able to do that while also helping us win games.”
