Omar Estevez getting it together

Phil Gurnee ♦ July 30, 2018 ♦ Leave a comment

20-year old infielder Omar Estevez is playing his second season for Rancho in Class A+ ball after having an underwhelming season in 2017.  Given his age, I was surprised that he dropped so far in the prospect ranking this spring as he was much younger than the age group for his level. He’s still young for the league as shown by the Baseball Reference chart below.

Year       Age AgeDif              Tm   Lg    Lev   PA 2B 3B HR BB  SO   BA  OBP  SLG  OPS  TB
2014-15     16  -10.7        Matanzas  CNS    Fgn   90  2  0  2  6  14 .213 .264 .313 .577  25
2016        18   -3.6      GreatLakes MIDW      A  508 32  2  9 26 121 .255 .298 .389 .687 183
2017        19   -3.7 RanchoCucamonga CALL     A+  501 24  3  4 33  97 .256 .309 .348 .657 159
2018        20   -2.3 RanchoCucamonga CALL     A+  426 29  2 10 29 111 .262 .314 .427 .740 163
Mino      Mino   Mino                 Mino Minors 1435 85  7 23 88 329 .257 .307 .385 .692 505
All        All    All                         All 1525 87  7 25 94 343 .255 .304 .381 .686 530

Provided by Baseball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 7/30/2018.
The reason for the comment is that in July, Omar has posted his best offensive month in two years, putting up a .822 OPS. Most of the improvement is coming from the slugging side as he has nine doubles and five home runs for the month. Overall, he already has 29 doubles but only ten home runs so 1/2 his home runs have come in July.  Many gave up on the Cuban bonus baby, but I didn’t and it is nice to see him starting to have some success.

His keystone partner at Rancho is Gavin Lux who didn’t get a hit or walk on July 28th. It was the first game since June 26th that Lux did not get a hit or walk.  As of right now Lux is clearly the top infield prospect in the Dodger system and might be working his way toward being one of the top ten middle infield prospects in all of baseball. I’m not sure what to make of his errors as minor league infield errors could be for a variety of reasons.

Staying with shortstops, Ronny Brito playing for Odgen in the Pioneer League drove in eight runs on Sunday and did it with only one extra-base hit, a three-run home run.  Sacrifice Fly, Bases Loaded Walk, Three Run Home Run, Two run single, and One run single.  His team won 20 – 19.

Jacob Scavuzzo hit a rough patch this past week after slugging nine home runs in eighty at-bats in July.  He’s still having a tremendous July but can’t be promoted to AAA because Oklahoma has Toles/Verdugo still there.

You have to like the innings that young Dustin May it putting up for Rancho. In five of his last seven starts, May has gotten at least twenty-one outs per start. In his last ten starts, he has hurled 64 innings, given up only 47 hits, walked just eleven, while striking out 61.

Tony Gonsolin was promoted from Rancho to Tulsa and was replaced by Leo Crawford. Both have done well for their new teams. Leo Crawford has made five starts for Rancho and has won four of them with a 2.38 ERA. Leo has 30 strikeouts, nine walks in 34 innings. Hitters are batting .268 against him.  Gonsolin has made three starts for Tulsa with a 2.84 ERA. Tony has pitched 19 innings, with 26 strikeouts, just three walks, and hitters are only batting against him.

The Dodgers have a somewhat older AAA rotation right now so you would expect them to have some success and Drew Hutchinson, Manny Banuelos, and Brock Stewart are doing just that.