After suffering a season-ending ACL injury last May, Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Andrew Toles is ready to once again make an impact on both sides of the ball.
It was a lengthy recovery for Toles, who was understandably behind schedule at the outset of Spring Training. But he returned to the lineup last week and is steadily seeing an increase in workload.
Toles played in the second of back-to-back days on Wednesday and slugged his first home run of the spring. Furthermore, he drove in another run on a sacrifice fly later in the contest.
After the game, Toles said he encouraged by the progress of his swing returning to form, via Ken Gurnick of MLB.com:
“My swing is getting better,” said Toles, who cashed in the first of two Chris Taylor doubles. “I’ve been working with the hitting coaches, getting better every day, getting a hitting lesson every, single day.”
Toles added his surgically-repaired knee is generally taking well to the action in Cactus League games:
“It feels pretty good,” said Toles, 25. “I’m sore just from playing, but everybody is. It’s not the knee. When I slow down, sometimes I feel a little. The training staff said to trust it, so that’s what I’m doing.”
A healthy Toles will only strengthen a loaded outfield depth chart that already includes the likes of Kiké Hernandez, Matt Kemp, Joc Pederson, Trayce Thompson and Alex Verdugo all vying for playing time in left field.
In 79 career Major League games, Toles owns a slash line of .294/.341/.483 (118 OPS+) across 217 plate appearances with 12 doubles, one triple and eight home runs. Although he’s proven to be productive, it would not come as a surprise if Toles began the season with Triple-A Oklahoma City.
