The future looks bright in Los Angeles.
The Dodgers will have a top prospect from both farm teams represented in the 2016 All-Star Futures Game at 4:00PM on Sunday in San Diego's Petco Park.
The game will feature two of the team's six prospects named to Baseball America's Midseason Top 100 list in Double-A Tulsa Drillers second baseman Willie Calhoun (#98) and Triple-A Oklahoma City pitcher Jharel Cotton.
For the first time in their young careers, both Dodger players will be in opposing dugouts as Calhoun will play for Team USA and the Virgin Island native Cotton will play for Team World.
Calhoun has appeared in 82 games for Tulsa this season and is hitting .260 with 17 homers and 58 RBI.
Calhoun said a more "mature approach" has led to his breakout season with the Drillers
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"I was swinging at a lot of first pitches, getting out," Calhoun told MiLB.com. "Now, I'm seeing deeper counts and seeing more pitches.
"I feel a lot closer," he said. "I feel a lot more ready. I feel like I made a huge step forward, and I feel like I'm ready to compete at the highest level, and that's all I can ask for."
The dream of playing professional baseball almost didn’t happen for Calhoun. He was kicked out of the University of Arizona for academic reasons and thought that was the end of it before choosing to join Yavapai College in Arizona.
"It was the best thing for me," Calhoun said. "After I got kicked out of [Arizona], I was kind of stuck on if I wanted to continue playing. And Yavapai gave me an opportunity and that really changed my whole life."
Calhoun hit 31 home runs in 63 games at Yavapai, was picked by the Dodgers in the fourth round of the 2015 Draft.
Cotton is 7-4 with a 4.74 ERA in 19 starts for the OKC Dodgers this season. Opponents are batting .210 against him and he ranks third in the Pacific Coast League with 97 strikeouts and a 1.13 WHIP which ranks second in the league. Cotton is seeking to become the second U.S. Virgin Island-born pitcher to reach the big leagues, following Al McBean.
He has made a lot of progress toward that goal in the last two years. Cotton began to take off when his fastball velocity spiked from 88-91 mph to 92-96. He gives hitters fits by mixing four-seamers up in the zone with plus changeups in the lower half. Though he's just 5-foot-11, Cotton uses a high arm slot and short stride to generate plane on his pitches.
Cotton could be a mid-rotation starter, though some scouts project him as a reliever because of his size and mechanics. He has done both for the Oklahoma City Dodgers this season.
"I'm just trying to get my confidence up, work on being more aggressive in the zone, not being too fine," Cotton told MiLB.com. "I feel like every time I went out there and got better at that. Because of that, my confidence keeps going up."
