Taylor Dollard

Dollard excelled in Cal Poly’s bullpen his first two seasons and continued his ace relief in the Cape Cod League last summer. He moved into Cal Poly’s rotation this spring and made a smooth transition to starting with a 1.67 ERA in four starts before the season shut down. Dollard intrigues evaluators as an athletic righthander with command of four pitches and a low-mileage arm. His fastball sits 88-92 mph, but it plays up with deception and command and gets more swings and misses than expected. He gets ahead of hitters with his fastball and finishes them with his slider, an above-average to plus pitch that draws swings and misses and projects to be an out pitch at higher levels. He has a usable curveball he can drop in for a strike at any time and a changeup that has a chance to be average with further development. Dollard still has room to fill out his frame and reminds many evaluators of what Shane Bieber looked like in college. Evaluators further suspect Dollard’s pitches have strong analytics traits, with one terming him an “analytics guy’s dream.”