Over the past several days, there has been a lot of buzz about Dodgers outfield prospect Andrew Toles being called up to the Dodgers in the very near future. As we all know, the soon-to-be 26-year-old (on May 24) Decatur, Georgia native and 2012 third-round draft pick (by the Miami Marlins) was assigned to the Dodgers Triple-A affiliate Oklahoma City Dodgers to begin the 2018 campaign.

It’s not that Toles wasn’t good enough to break spring training camp with the MLB Dodgers, for whom he played 48 games in 2016 and 31 games in 2017 until injuring his right ACL when he collided with the left field wall at Dodger Stadium on May 9, 2017 that required season-ending surgery. It was because the Dodgers had a glut of outfielders vying for three everyday jobs (plus one bench spot), and opted to go with soon-to-be 26-year-old (on April 21) Joc Pederson instead, citing that Toles “needed at-bats,” which he wouldn’t get as a back-up outfielder.

All Toles has done in his six games thus far at OKC is go 12-for-26 (.462) at the plate, while slugging four doubles, one home run and driven in seven runs. He also has one stolen base.

There’s hot, and then there’s Andrew Toles hot.
(Photo credit – Bryan Terry)

So hot was Toles that the buzz was that he would soon be shipping out to LA, at-bats notwithstanding. This from Dodgers beat writer Ken Gurnick of MLB.com:

As for Pederson, with the big club he is 3-for-21 (.143) with no home runs, two doubles and two RBI. He has also walked three times and struck out twice in the nine games he has appeared in thus far, while making eight starts through the Dodgers first 12 games.

And then came Friday night.

As the Dodgers were having their lunch handed to them by Zack Greinke and the Arizona Diamondbacks on Friday, frequent updates from OKC about Toles kept popping up, first about his home run in his first at-bat of the night, and then singles in his next two. He was then removed from the game, leaving many to speculate that he was finally… finally being called up to the big club.

Not only was Toles not being called up to Dodgers, the unthinkable happened.

It’s no secret that a key to Toles’ success is his plus-plus speed, and pulled hamstrings take considerable time to fully heal … like weeks, not days. As such, this puts the ‘Toles Watch’ (as many were calling it) on hold; perhaps for a significant amount of time.

We’ll keep you posted as additional information becomes available.