With all the endless discussions currently in the news surrounding the prospective layouts of the club’s Opening Day 25-man roster, many fans of the Dodgers can’t help but envision the overwhelming amount of depth and skill lurking on the fringe of the bigs at Triple-A Oklahoma City. If the major league squad stays relatively healthy and productive throughout the regular season, the crew at OKC will not only possess some of the best player talent in the Pacific Coast League, but will also be almost untouchable en route to yet another American Northern divisional crown.
While we felt it would be fun to step away from the big league grind just a moment to toy with the OKC roster, it was still a tough task to assemble one potential Opening Day batting order for the fellas at Triple-A. There’s a handful of consequences that will dictate at which level of the organization some of the players begin their respective campaigns, but here’s one lineup that could garner a fair amount of credibility:
- Andrew Toles — CF
- Chris Taylor — SS
- Cody Bellinger — 1B
- Rob Segedin — 3B
- O’Koyea Dickson — LF
- Alex Verdugo — RF
- Willie Calhoun — 2B
- Kyle Farmer — C
- Alex Wood — P
If you think about it, this particular lineup has length, and it totally has the flavor of a batting order from a PCL All-Star contest. While there’s still a reasonable chance that Andrew Toles begins the regular season on the big league squad, several circumstances — like the club electing to start the year with an eight-man bullpen, for one — could relegate Tolesy to the Triple-A squad, at least for the beginning of the 2017 campaign.
And there’s plenty of flexibility to mix and match, affording manager Bill Haselman and his staff the opportunity to show a plethora of different looks. If veterans Bobby Wilson and Ike Davis do indeed accept spots with OKC come April, it will give Rob Segedin and Cody Bellinger the freedom to showcase their skills in the outfield on occasion. In addition, the presences of Charlie Culberson, Drew Maggi, Jack Murphy, Darnell Sweeney and Tyler Holt further highlight the amount of genuine depth the Dodgers boast throughout the entire system.
Just taking a step back and looking at both the big league and Triple-A potential lineups creates a huge level of excitement for fans of the Dodgers everywhere. The amount of promise that the organization has at both levels is absolutely immense.
And that’s not even mentioning anything about either pitching staff.
(FOLLOW DENNIS ON TWITTER: @THINKBLUEPC)