LOS ANGELES -- The Dodgers will promote top pitching prospect Julio Urias before their series with the Mets that opens Friday night in New York, the club announced via Twitter on Thursday.
The 19-year-old Urias -- the top left-handed pitching prospect in the game and No. 2 overall prospect according to MLBPipeline.com -- has been dominating this season at Triple-A Oklahoma City, where he is 4-1 with a 1.10 ERA and 44 strikeouts in 41 innings.
Urias has been a starter throughout his brief career, but he is just as likely to be used out of the Dodgers' bullpen this season, allowing management to limit his innings. He has never pitched more than 87 2/3 innings in any of his three previous pro seasons.
A native of Mexico, Urias has often been compared to fellow lefty countryman Fernando Valenzuela, who the Dodgers promoted to the Major Leagues as a reliever in September 1980 before he launched his Fernandomania season of '81 as a starter, when he won both the National League Rookie of the Year Award and the NL Cy Young Award.
The Dodgers purchased Urias from the Diablos Rojos of the Mexican League when he was 16 for a reported $450,000.
Urias' innings were limited to 80 last year, when he had in-season cosmetic surgery on his left eye to address a benign mass that partially closed the eye, but did not affect his pitching.
Ken Gurnick has covered the Dodgers for MLB.com since 2001. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
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