Dodgers News: Star LA Pitcher's Friends 'Convinced' He'll Leave in Free Agency

Julio Urias is a free agent after this season and friends believe he's gone from Los Angeles.

Dodgers pitcher Julio Urias has had a couple outstanding seasons in a row. In 2021, he was the only 20-game winner in Major League Baseball, going 20-3 with a 2.96 ERA and finishing seventh in the National League Cy Young Award voting. Last year, he finished third in the Cy Young after leading the NL with a 2.16 ERA.

Urias was the best pitcher in the league last year, but Sandy Alcantara won the award because he was almost as good in a lot more innings, therefore providing more value to his team. Los Angeles manager Dave Roberts argued late last season that the innings disparity shouldn't be held against Urias because it's a team decision, but in the end, Alcantara brought home the hardware.

That innings disparity might end up hurting the Dodgers, too, if anonymous friends of Urias are to believed. MLB insider Bob Nightengale wrote in USA Today that Julio might be less willing to return to LA in free agency because of the way he's been handled.

Friends close to Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Julio Urias, frustrated by the pitch limits that the organization has set throughout his career, are convinced that he’ll depart as a free agent after the season.

These sorts of reports are always best taken with a grain or two of salt, of course. Unnamed "friends" with an unspecified degree of closeness with Urias could say a lot of things, and the way it's worded technically means it's the friends, not Urias himself who are "frustrated by the pitch limits." (Whether that vague wording from Nightengale is deliberate or accidental remains unknown.)

But yeah, Julio could be frustrated by the way he's been handled. Would he had won the 2022 Cy Young if he'd been allowed to pitch deeper into games? He might have, or he might have had worse overall numbers from facing lineups more times in each game. He might even have worn down and gotten injured or ineffective — his 2021 and 2022 innings totals were both about 100 more than his previous career high.

It's the nature of pitching for a team like the Dodgers, run by people who understand the importance of limiting innings and on a team that expects to play through October every year, that you're probably going to have to really stand out from your peers to win the Cy Young.

That might be enough to drive Urias away in free agency. If nothing else, it might preclude him from taking a hometown discount, which might be the only way LA was going to bring him back anyway.