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The Dodgers have a designated hitter, and he’s under contract for seven more seasons.
His name is Shohei Ohtani.
Doesn’t matter how special of a hitter the Dodgers believe Josue De Paula is. Doesn’t matter how many evaluators say that De Paula reminds them of Yordan Alvarez in the batter’s box.
De Paula will not be the Dodgers’ primary DH anytime soon.
The 21-year-old knows what he has to do.
His team knows. His agent knows. Everybody knows.
He has to improve his defense.
“We’re going to keep working at it and come back better,” said De Paula, who is widely considered a liability as a corner outfielder.
When the Dodgers were eliminated by the Brewers in the National League Championship Series, De Paula said he would return to his native New York, then spend time at a training center in Miami run by his agent, Scott Boras.
“The focus is on him adapting to an outfield position,” Boras said.
Working with De Paula will be former major league outfielder Alex Ochoa, who now runs Boras’ Miami facility. A defensive standout as a player, Ochoa was a World Series champion with the Angels in 2002. He also played in Japan.
Boras said he also expects former Red Sox outfielder Jackie Bradley Jr. to assist De Paula. Bradley won a Gold Glove in 2018.
De Paula isn’t being asked to transform into Willie Mays overnight. He just has to be competent enough to make the Dodgers unafraid to play him in the outfield.
He does that and he could make Teoscar Hernández expendable. He doesn’t and he will remain an insurance policy for Ohtani at DH — or, perhaps, become a trade candidate himself.
With Ohtani on the injured list, De Paula was the DH in nine of the 10 games he started as a mid-September call-up. In the one game he started in left field, he was removed after six innings.
Nonetheless, Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman argued that De Paula showed “marked improvement” as a defender over the last year.
Friedman said he believed De Paula benefited from being in a major-league environment in the month between his promotion from Double-A to the end of the Dodgers’ postseason run.
“For us, it was about the added benefit of him coming up in September, being on our playoff roster, being around,” Friedman said. “It’s one thing for us to say to the guy, ‘Hey, here’s your daily routine. Here’s what you have to do.’ We were all 21 at one point and thought we had all the answers, and it’s just hard to connect those dots in your brain.
“I think him coming up, the way our guys welcomed him in the clubhouse, him being around our players and seeing how they prepare and what they do before a game — I think really landed with him in a way that words from us or our minor league staff couldn’t have accomplished in the same way.”
De Paula worked on his defense daily with third base coach Dino Ebel. He also received pointers from manager Dave Roberts, a former major-league outfielder.
“I felt like I was in the best place to learn,” De Paula said.
General manager Brandon Gomes said he was encouraged by De Paula’s attitude.
“We’re not looking just to be like, ‘Oh, De Pau got pretty good,’” Gomes said. “Like, I think his mindset and our coaching staff and all of us is to make him as good of a defensive outfielder as he can to be a full player because that’s what we expect of all of our guys that step on the field.”
Gomes said he thought De Paula could be an above-average defender.
Shortly after he was promoted from Double-A, De Paula said he was driven by the negativity regarding his outfield play.
“I know that’s a big area of improvement for me,” he said. “I know I get a lot of hate on it. I’m that type, if I get hate on it, I’m going to focus on it more. So I’m gonna shut a lot of people up with my defense very soon.”
Becoming a solid outfielder will do more than silence criticism. It will open up a pathway into the Dodgers’ lineup.
