Andrew Friedman Believes Dodgers Prospect Diego Cartaya Can Bounce Back From Struggles

Diego Cartaya is in his fifth season with the Los Angeles organization since being signed as an international free agent out of Venezuela in 2018.

The 22-year-old quickly established himself as one of baseball’s top prospects, but he endured some struggles last year in his first action with Double-A Tulsa.

Cartaya hit just .189/.278/.379 with 10 doubles, 19 home runs and 57 RBI over 93 games. He continued to show elite power, but struck out at a 29% clip and saw his walk rate dip to 9%.

Despite the down year, Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman is confident that Cartaya will be able to bounce back, via Cary Osborne of Dodger Insider:

“He’s a really naturally talented player who’s coming off a down year,” Friedman said. “And I’ve seen that a lot in the past with really good players, the ones who have really good makeup, bounce back from that. And so it wouldn’t surprise me at all Diego comes out this year and has a really good year.”

Friedman’s comments echo those of Dodgers general manager Brandon Gomes, who previously said the team saw growth from Cartaya defensively despite his struggles at the plate.

Cartaya committed a career-high nine errors and threw out 19% of would-be base stealers in 68 games (65 starts) for the Drillers last year. However, he improved in other areas that aren’t measured on the stat sheet, such as leadership and pitch calling.

Unfortunately for Cartaya, his second season with the Drillers thus far has been a continuation of last year as he is hitting just .136/.333/.182 with one double and three RBI through six games.

Although his power numbers are down, Cartaya has drawn nearly as many walks (six) as strikeouts (seven).

Diego Cartaya worked on swing adjustments

Gomes noted that Cartaya made some adjustments to his swing during the offseason, which hasn’t translated to much success so far, but there is still plenty of baseball to be played.