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Welcome to The California Post’s weekly Dodgers recap, where baseball writers Dylan Hernández and Jack Harris review the week that was, hand out very official awards and take stock of the state of the season.
FUTURE DODGER OF THE WEEK
(Where we speculate about potential future Dodgers acquisitions — focusing this week on the upcoming MLB Draft that begins on Saturday)
Eric Becker, University of Virginia shortstop (ETA: Saturday)
Draft weekend is usually a defining period for many organizations’ futures.
But for the Dodgers this year, it has felt like an almost non-event.
That’s the external perception, at least, with the team having just one pick (No. 40) in the top 130 overall selections, and only two in the first six rounds.
The club’s top selection was bumped down to the second round because of luxury tax penalties from last season. They then forfeited four other early picks for signing two players this offseason who had received qualifying offers (Kyle Tucker and Edwin Díaz). The team also has by far the smallest pool for signing bonuses of any club at $3.9 million (the next-closest club is the Toronto Blue Jays at $5.5 million.
As president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman quipped this winter, the Dodgers “food budget for the draft meetings [might] exceed our signing bonuses.”
“Not great by any means,” Friedman acknowledged at the time. “But [we are] just trying to balance that with doing everything we could to put ourselves in the best position to win a championship in 2026.”
Because of that, don’t expect anything flashy in the draft, making a prospect like Becker –– who has a plus glove, hit .348 in college and won’t have to be wooed with a bigger signing bonus like a high school prospect might –– a sensible selection. He has long been linked to the team this summer in mock drafts.
The real goal this weekend will be finding overlooked talents later in the draft, something the Dodgers have done successfully over the years to maintain a top-ranked farm system.
QUESTION OF THE WEEK
Will the Dodgers play any meaningful games the rest of the season?
As we’ve covered ad nauseam in recent weeks, the Dodgers have pulled so far away in the standings already that they can already start planning for October and printing division championship T-shirts.
The real question is whether the team will even face pressure in the battle for playoff seeding.
Right now, they are six games clear of the Atlanta Braves for a top-two seed, and an important first-round bye. They have a two-game edge on the Milwaukee Brewers for the best record in the majors and home-field advantage throughout the playoffs.
Getting that first-round bye –– and avoiding a best-of-three wild-card series –– will be the main priority. That should add some significance to second-half series against the Braves (Aug 25-27 in Atlanta), the Phillies (July 20-22 in Philadelphia) and the Cubs (Aug 3-5 in Chicago); the only other teams with real, albeit still slim, chances to catch them for a top-two seed.
Outside of that, the remainder of this regular season should be nothing more than postseason preparations, assuming the Dodgers avoid the second-half nightmares they endured last season.
PLAYER OF THE WEEK
Andy Pages (first career All-Star selection this week; .263 average, 16 HR, 64 RBI, .791 OPS this season)
No, Pages has not maintained his blistering early-season form, with his batting average falling from .333 on May 10 to .263 over the two months since, and his OPS dipping from .946 to under .800 in that same period.
Still, with 16 home runs, 64 RBIs and MLB-best 18 defensive runs saved in center field, the 25-year-old earned his first career All-Star selection after being voted in by fans as a National League starter.
It was sentimental for him, and significant for the club.
Personally, the All-Star nod made up for Pages’ frustrating snub from the game last year, which he said had “bothered” him but also provided a new perspective.
“It was then that I understood that those things, none of us have any control over,” Pages said in Spanish this week. “It’s all in the control of the people who vote. That’s why this year I was more calm and simply doing what I can do.”
For the Dodgers, it made Pages their first new homegrown player to become an All-Star since catcher Will Smith in 2023, making the Cuban-born slugger their latest developmental success story.
“There was a lot of people who said Andy cannot play major-league center field,” manager Dave Roberts recalled during his clubhouse address announcing Pages as an All-Star. “And this guy … has worked his a– off to be an elite center fielder for the best team in baseball.”
PITCHER OF THE WEEK
Yoshinobu Yamamoto (7 scoreless innings, 10 strikeouts this week; 9-5 record, 2.49 ERA this season)
Pages was one of five Dodgers’ All-Star selections this year. But Yamamoto was the only pitcher to punch his ticket to Philadelphia (at least, pending an ongoing campaign for Justin Wrobleski to become a replacement, so far).
On the night Yamamoto earned the honor, he went out and had one of his best career outings, going seven scoreless innings with 10 strikeouts to maintain a blistering run through the middle of this season.
Yamamoto has been so good lately, he might be starting to mount a dark-horse Cy Young chase.
Right now, he ranks top-10 among qualified National League pitchers in ERA (2.49, fourth), wins (9, tied-eighth), innings pitched (104 ⅔, ninth), strikeout-to-walk rate (4.76, fifth), FIP (3.22, sixth) and Fangraphs’ version of pitching WAR (2.7, seventh).
The only other pitchers who can claim the same: Jacob Misiorowski and Cristopher Sánchez.
PROSPECT OF THE WEEK
Easton Shelton (California League Player of Month in June; .291 average, 23 HR, 76 RBI in Single-A this year)
Not familiar with Shelton’s name?
We don’t blame you.
The 20-year-old Nevada native has largely come out of nowhere this year. He was signed by the Dodgers as an undrafted free agent out of high school in 2023. He posted solid but unspectacular numbers over the last couple years in the rookie Arizona Complex League, batting .255 with seven home runs and 23 RBIs.
But this year, the 6-foot-4 first baseman has had a breakthrough, racking up nine more home runs and six more RBIs than anyone in the single-A California League, where he also ranks second in slugging percentage, fourth in OPS and top-20 in batting average.
He isn’t on any top-30 lists for the franchise, but is another example of how their pipeline continues to find talent, becoming an unexpected surprise as a serious power threat.
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