Josue De Paula has played 11 major league games and already owns a 1.081 OPS and a .500 OBP — numbers most everyday starters never sniff across a full season. The catch? On Wednesday, September 23, Shohei Ohtani returns from the injured list and reclaims the designated hitter spot — the only place the Dodgers had been able to slot De Paula in. With Kyle Tucker in right, Teoscar Hernández in left and Andy Pages in center, and the Wild Card round opening September 29, Los Angeles is staring at the kind of problem every front office wishes it had: what do you do with a rookie who’s raking like this?
Straight from Double-A to sparking the Dodgers offense
De Paula made his MLB debut on September 11 as a designated hitter in Miami, becoming the first position player the Dodgers had promoted directly from Double-A Tulsa under Andrew Friedman — skipping Triple-A entirely, which says plenty on its own. He arrived as the No. 6 overall prospect on MLB Pipeline and the top-ranked player in the Dodgers system, and he’s backed up every bit of that billing from day one.
In Tulsa this season, the 21-year-old Dominican hit .303/.401/.547 with 27 home runs, 37 doubles, 104 RBI and 31 stolen bases in 124 games — a stat line that earned him the 2026 Texas League MVP. Nobody expected that production to carry over immediately to the majors. De Paula did it anyway.
The October puzzle: Ohtani’s back, and the DH is no longer available
While Ohtani was sidelined with left knee and right biceps discomfort, De Paula owned the DH role. That door closes today. Tucker, Hernández and Pages are all entrenched starters in the outfield, and they were there before the 21-year-old showed up.
Here’s the real knot: the weakest tool in De Paula’s game is his defense. His scouting grade in the field is a 40 — the lowest of any position player in the MLB Pipeline Top 100. The Dodgers even brought in Jason Heyward as a special assistant in spring to work on that side of his game. De Paula himself has been straightforward about it, acknowledging there’s work to be done out there.
But the bat makes that conversation almost beside the point. His xwOBA sits at .437 — what Statcast projects he should be producing based purely on contact quality — and his average exit velocity is 89.2 mph. He’s not running hot on luck; he’s genuinely hitting the ball hard. A 46.2% hard-hit rate confirms that nearly half his batted balls are leaving the bat with real authority.
Dave Roberts and his staff have about a week to solve this before the postseason begins. The options are limited: rotate an outfielder to give De Paula time in a corner, work him into rest days for others, or keep him as a high-impact bat off the bench. None of those solutions is perfect. All of them are better than leaving that bat out of the picture.
The numbers behind the hype
Here’s what De Paula’s Statcast profile looks like through his first 42 plate appearances in 2026:
- AVG: .323
- OPS: 1.081
- OBP: .500
- 1 home run, 7 RBI
- xwOBA: .437 (what Statcast says he should be producing based on contact quality)
- Average exit velocity: 89.2 mph
- Barrel rate: 11.5%
- Hard-hit rate: 46.2% (batted balls at 95+ mph)
- Sprint speed: 41st percentile
The Statcast profile tells the story the traditional numbers don’t always capture: De Paula isn’t just getting on base — he’s squaring the ball up consistently, and the underlying metrics back every bit of it.
