He may have been QB1 on their board, but the Dodgers’ selection of former Clemson and current Oregon State quarterback DJ Uiagalelei in the 20th and final round of their draft class is anything but a novelty pick.
The organization feels the former five-star recruit, a highly-touted quarterback who attended St. John Bosco High School in nearby Bellflower, has a legitimate shot to be part of their organization as a pitching prospect by next spring.
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“We think there’s a serious chance,” Billy Gasparino, the Dodgers’ vice president of amateur scouting said Wednesday. “I know he’s putting football first. I know this is a big season for him and his NFL Draft status. We just want to keep him in play.”
The project began in earnest over the span of a few months. While Uiagalelei was in the transfer portal this spring after three seasons at Clemson, he told The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman that the organization’s area scout, Jonah Rosenthal, reached out to ask how long it has been since the 22-year-old had picked up a baseball. Uiagalelei had reportedly thrown in the mid-90s off the mound during his time as a two-way player in high school, earning his way onto the Dodgers’ radar then and keeping him in the periphery in the years that followed. It made enough of an impression that Rosenthal said he likely would’ve had at least a third-round grade as a pitcher had he kept going and been drafted out of high school.
Dodgers VP of amateur scouting Billy Gasparino said "we think there's a serious chance" that D.J. Uiagalelei winds up as part of their system. Acknowledged it's a big season for the Oregon St. QB for football, but wants to "keep the conversation going as as a possibility."
— Fabian Ardaya (@FabianArdaya) July 12, 2023
While he didn’t play college baseball, Rosenthal maintained the relationship. Though Uiagalelei opted to transfer to Oregon State, where he is expected to compete for the starting job after three up-and-down seasons with Clemson, the Dodgers took a late-round flier at Rosenthal’s suggestion in hopes of continuing that conversation. Despite Uiagalelei’s football background, the Dodgers are convinced that the chances of him pursuing a baseball career are real.
“It’s obviously very unique, and our first time drafting a quarterback like this, so we got to do some more due diligence on what this looks like,” Gasparino said. “But we’re very serious about it. And I think DJ is too.”
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He at least hasn’t closed the door on it, and the scout remains hopeful.
“I think in all my conversations, he wouldn’t have continued to talk to me (if he wasn’t interested),” Rosenthal said in a phone call with The Athletic. “I think that he’s super interested in doing this. I don’t think that we would have had this relationship and have continued to talk over all this time if he wasn’t interested in it. Trust me, I would have a lot of empty blue bubble text messages if he really didn’t care.”
There are obvious hurdles Uiagalelei would have to clear to become a real prospect, even if he opts to play baseball. He’s thrown a baseball “very little” since his junior year of high school, Gasparino said. Uiagalelei’s focus since has been entirely on football, and his gridiron career has included being the man to follow No. 1 pick Trevor Lawrence at Clemson. Now, he’s trying to win a job at Oregon State after freshman Cade Klubnik emerged for the Tigers down the stretch. The Dodgers, Gasparino said, are going to try to find “creative” ways to get Uiagalelei to throw some off to the side so they can build him back up to resume his baseball career as soon as next spring. Even then, they recognize that a strong year with the Beavers could land him on NFL teams’ radars.
“If his goal is to be a QB1 in the NFL, then by all means, I hope he’s that guy,” Rosenthal said. “He wants to go 12-0 and go to the college national championship. Trust me, he does. But this isn’t a gimmick. If it doesn’t work out. I think that this is a very real interest for him.”
Listed at 6-foot-4 and 251 pounds, Uiagalelei brings size and physicality to the position. While he hasn’t pitched competitively in years, he’s maintained his arm strength throwing a football while not putting the type of strain on his elbow that years of pro baseball would have. Given the Dodgers’ player development prowess, Rosenthal said, there are intriguing possibilities.
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“This is a perfect blank canvas with very high-end tools,” he said.
The Dodgers do represent a fallback plan, but it would hardly be a consolation prize. Uiagalelei also loves the game, as he told Rosenthal.
Rosenthal recalled Uiagalelei telling him: “I grew up in L.A., I bleed blue. I’m a huge Dodger fan. Baseball was one of my first loves. When football became what I was becoming famous for that’s kind of what I went with, but like in the back of my mind, baseball was always a love for me.”
The selection was part circ*mstance, part curiosity. Gasparino lamented the incoming limits that will shrink organizational minor-league rosters from 180 to 165 players in 2024, as negotiated in the first-ever minor-league collective bargaining agreement. That, Gasparino said, “squeezed” on a Dodgers farm system that has been lauded for its depth and propelled the organization to take more chances in the later rounds of the draft even if there are signability concerns.
That meant the Dodgers could take a chance on someone like Duke left-hander Luke Fox who Gaspraino said was “definitely not your normal 17th-round pick,” but whom the organization will push to sign after Fox dropped to them because he missed his junior season following Tommy John surgery.
It also meant being willing to wait on a talented arm who just so happens to play another sport.
Some other draft notes from the Dodgers’ 22-player class:
- No one throws harder in the Dodgers’ 2023 draft class than Eriq Swan. Reports had him hitting 102 mph; the Dodgers’ scouts have seen him top out at 101 mph. He is a metrics darling, ranking seventh overall in Stuff+ in large part due to how his slider plays and the potential of his changeup.
Final stuff+ for college baseball this year. Long overdue. Stuff+ doesn’t know the location or result of a pitch, just the velo and shape. pic.twitter.com/yoNDRZg2eO
— 📊 (@mason_mcrae) May 31, 2023
Yet, in 16 outings this season at Middle Tennessee State, the 6-foot-6 right-hander had a 6.49 ERA. He walked a whopping 45 hitters in 61 innings. Public scouting reports have noted that despite its supreme velocity, his fastball does not have the appropriate life or characteristics to miss bats and be effective.
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The Dodgers still used one of their fourth-round picks, a compensation pick for losing Trea Turner to free agency, on a converted former shortstop in Swan, hoping the organization’s player development staff can work with him to tweak his fastball shape into something more useful and consistent.
“When you’re 6-foot-6 with his kind of limbs and you kind of throw 100 easily, we feel like that’s like a good foundation to start with,” Gasparino said. “Our player development staff can’t wait to get their hands on him. We just think there’s going to be multiple ways to help him get better and he has elite talent.”
- It’s easy to read the scouting report on Tennessee high school right-hander Brady Smith and see how he fits into the familiar archetype of Dodgers drafts. The third-round selection and Virginia Tech commit (who Gasparino said he feels confident about signing) may be slightly undersized for the position at 6-foot-2 and 170 pounds. But he has strong fastball characteristics and multiple off-speed offerings, including a high-spin curveball and slider. Gasparino noted Smith’s athleticism for the position and compared him to previous draft picks Walker Buehler, 2022 17th-rounder Payton Martin and 2021 third-rounder Peter Heubeck as right-handed pitchers who can translate that into something more in the Dodgers’ system.”He was one of our favorites of our scouts,” Gasparino said of Smith, who kicked off a middle-rounds run that he felt was the strength of their draft and has unearthed gems in the past such as Dustin May, Tony Gonsolin and Emmet Sheehan.
- Gasparino said Jake Gelof, the Dodgers’ second pick, could move quickly through the system. It’s to be expected for the college performer who became the first player in University of Virginia school history to log multiple 20-plus homer seasons. Other fast-movers Gasparino highlighted were Florida State left-hander Wyatt Crowell (who is expected to return from Tommy John surgery by the middle of next summer) and Texas outfielder Dylan Campbell, who was the Dodgers’ compensatory pick for losing Tyler Anderson to free agency last winter.
(Photo of DJ Uiagalelei: Ali Gradischer / Getty Images)
Fabian Ardaya is a staff writer covering the Los Angeles Dodgers for The Athletic. He previously spent three seasons covering the crosstown Los Angeles Angels for The Athletic. He graduated from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in May 2017 after growing up in a Phoenix-area suburb. Follow Fabian on Twitter @FabianArdaya
