Dodgers Prospects: Talent Evaluator Feels LA Got a Steal with Gavin Stone
The Dodgers drafted Gavin Stone in the fifth round of the shortened 2020 draft, the second-to-last pick of the entire draft. There was no minor-league baseball that year because of the pandemic, but Stone came out throwing when he debuted in 2021. The 6-foot-1 righty out of Central Arkansas posted a solid 3.76 ERA between Low-A and High-A in his pro debut, with 138 strikeouts in 91 innings.
Things only got better from there. Stone pitched in High-A, Double-A, and Triple-A in 2022, posting a combined 1.48 ERA with 168 strikeouts in 121.2 innings and skyrocketing up LA's prospects list.
Carlos Collazo and Geoff Pontes of Baseball America recently had a conversation about Stone, and Pontes couldn't have been more complimentary.
"It's unbelievable. The Dodgers do this every year. He was the penultimate pick, the second-to-last pick in that five-round 2020 draft. I think if we redrafted today, he's probably in the top half of the first round, which is remarkable."
It's not even that everyone got it wrong on Stone. He pitched very well in his last two years at Central Arkansas, posting a combined 1.44 ERA in 75 innings between his sophomore and junior seasons. But he struck out 89 hitters in those 75 innings — a perfectly respectable number, to be sure, but very little about a 10.7 K/9 in the Southland Conference predicts he'll be striking out 12.7 per nine in Triple-A two years later.
Stone has progressed and developed in the Los Angeles farm system, and really, that's what Pontes is talking about when he says "The Dodgers do this every year." Gavin Stone is the latest example of LA identifying a player who will develop well in their system and then helping him turn into a stud. It keeps happening, but it will never stop being impressive.
