KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Rookie left-hander Justin Wrobleski delivered again for the Los Angeles Dodgers, shutting down the Kansas City Royals over six scoreless relief innings in another effective performance.
That’s all fine, Wrobleski said, but he really preferred talking about the popup he caught on the mound. It was Wrobleski’s most treasured moment in a 5-1 victory Sunday that helped the Dodgers take two of three games in the series at Kauffman Stadium.
There wasn’t anything particularly difficult about the play, but it still was unusual for a pitcher to make it — so it wasn’t exactly routine, either. Typically on a high popup, the pitcher scatters as the other infielders call him off, and one of them takes charge. Not this time.
With one out in the bottom of the seventh after working the count to 2-2, Mark Canha popped up a slider right to the middle of the diamond. With the infield playing deep, Wrobleski took about four small steps backward and made a one-handed catch on the back slope of the mound. It happened during a quiet moment among the thinning crowd, so you could hear, even from the higher decks, Dodgers infielders shouting instructions.
Wrobleski was the only one calling for the ball, yelling “I got it! I got it!” like ballplayers are taught. Wrobleski told Pitcher List he could hear shortstop Enrique Hernández and second baseman Miguel Rojas shouting for him to “Take it! Take it!” It was kind of a backward moment. Wrobleski said he loved how it turned out.
“I was fired up,” he said. “I didn’t know how to react, but I was really fired up about catching a popup, because I’ve never caught one before. I was super-excited about that.”
Pitchers getting out of the way so someone else can catch a popup is one those unwritten rules in Major League Baseball. Pitchers do take fielding practice, and they’re trained to make certain kinds of plays — like comebackers, bunts, and covering first base or home plate occasionally. They’re not helpless out there. But they almost never deal with popups that have any kind of loft, even ones having a trajectory to land near the mound.
Wrobleski said, to him, it “kind of feels like” pitchers aren’t allowed to go after those kind of plays. So he usually defers to the rest of the infield.
“Obviously those guys work their hardest out there trying to field the ball, so you don’t want to get in the way of that,” Wrobleski said. “But with that one, it was hit over the mound, and as it’s in the air, I’m like: ‘Do I catch it? Do I catch it?'”
He did. Wrobleski made it look a little like Cliff Lee’s famous and humorous nonchalant effort at Yankee Stadium in Game 2 of the World Series in 2009. Not that nonchalant, but confident, like Wrobleski belonged making such a play. Wrobleski, who was 9 years old at the time it happened, indicated he would look up the Lee moment on YouTube when he got a chance.
Wrobleski, who turns 25 this month, was the Dodgers’ 11th-round pick in 2021 from Oklahoma State, and appears to be another budding success story of the team’s development program. He’s put up strong results in the minors over parts of four seasons, striking out 276 batters and posting a 3.56 ERA in 260⅓ innings. While not among any publication’s overall top 100 prospect lists, Wrobleski has been popping up on different Dodgers prospect rankings. Baseball America named him L.A.’s No. 10 prospect in the preseason, and Keith Law of The Athletic ranked him the Dodgers’ No. 8 prospect. Dodgers Digest ranked him as high as No. 4 in 2024, dropping him to No. 8 this preseason.
He made eight major-league appearances a season ago, and made the Dodgers’ Opening Day roster, but he spent most of the first two months of the season in the minors. Since the start of June, he’s been one of the Dodgers’ best pitchers. Thanks in part to sharper command and added velocity, Wrobleski had a 2.73 ERA with a 26-6 strikeout/walk ratio over 26⅓ innings in five appearances in June as a starter or bulk guy. His four-seam velocity averages 95.4 mph, and he was reaching 98-plus against the Royals while hitting the corners.
Wrobleski said his debut outing against the Washington Nationals in April went poorly, which more or less forced him to make some adjustments. The Dodgers, whose starting pitching has sustained myriad injuries along with some underperformance, have appreciated the boost since his return from Triple-A. Wrobleski going six strong innings so efficiently, manager Dave Roberts said, allowed the team to rest the back end of the bullpen.
“Coming out of the bullpen, he’s done a nice job of being on the attack from pitch one,” Roberts said. “He is in the strike zone, commanding all of his pitches, and he’s got a nice rhythm. It feels like the hitters are on their heels; the fastball certainly is playing up. He’s just continuing to grow.”
So much growth that the Dodgers are even letting Wrobleski make defensive plays that other pitchers won’t even try.
