We all know most of the guys who we’ll see on the field for the Dodgers this year, but it’s probably a good time of the year to review the 40-man roster, especially those players who don’t have numbers listed.

We went over the pitchers earlier this week. Now it’s time to talk about random guys who are position players. The Dodgers seem to have improved depth up the middle, but much of their roster is aging and the team will almost certainly depend on some less-known guys at various positions at some point in the season. Will they be more productive than players like Drew Butera and Miguel Rojas?

I guess we’ll find out.

Austin Barnes

Everyone is talking about the addition of Yasmani Grandal behind the plate. Grandal and A.J. Ellis will provide a nice tandem at catcher, but both have missed games in recent years and it’s likely at least one of them will miss at least a little time.

That’s where Barnes, one of the players the Dodgers picked up in the Dee Gordon trade, could come in. The 26 year-old catcher out of Arizona State is 5’9″, 185 pounds, and has played four seasons in the minors — never above the Double-A level. Last year, Barnes’ combined line with two minor league teams was a .298 avearge and .870 OPS.

Despite his place on the 40-man, I suppose it’s possible that Barnes might not be the next man up. His never being above AA prior to this season could cause the Dodgers to make some kind of other plans if a need should arise. Barnes has also played second base and third base pretty decently in the minors, though I’m not sure he figures into major league plans anywhere but at catcher for the near future.

Enrique Hernandez is a player who has enjoyed some limited success at the major league level. By EricEnfermero (Own work) via Wikimedia Commons

Enrique Hernandez

Hernandez, a 23 year-old second baseman, played 42 combined games in Houston and Miami last season. In that limited time, he was pretty good, posting a 1.5 WAR in only 135 plate appearances. The Puerto Rican prospect also played shortstop, third base, and all three outfield positions last season. He figures to challenge the much older and better-paid Alex Guerrero for a spot on the major-league roster.

Hernandez also came from the Marlins in the Dee Gordon trade and figures, according to ZiPS projections, to possibly be more valuable (projected 2.0 wins) than Gordon. To be fair, Steamer projections don’t like Hernandez as much, especially considering they say he’ll only get 20 major league at-bats.

That said, Hernandez is another player who gives the team flexibility with players off the bench both offensively and defensively. He’s probably buried behind names like Darwin Barney and Guerrero, which is a good reason for the low Steamer projection. He can truly play multiple positions and is the kind of guy I imagine Andrew Friedman might really like. He has all the words.

Young. Flexibility. Options.

Chris Heisey

Heisey might be one of the most interesting fresh faces the Dodgers have brought-in this season. While Joc Pederson is presumably going to take the reigns in center field, the 30 year-old Heisey will compete for at-bats, especially against left handed pitchers. Heisey has never played in more than 120 games, but has value defensively.

He and Scott Van Slyke still have some redundancy in that they are both right-handed outfielders. As the current roster stands, they could both be battling for the fifth outfield spot. As it stands, nobody is on the disabled list yet either. If things break right for him (and maybe wrong for the Dodgers), Heisey could get his share of at-bats this season — especially against lefties and especially if Joc Pederson really struggles.

Scott Schebler

Schebler is on the 40-man roster, but is only 24 years old and is probably a low-man on the outfield totem pole. He is a former 26th-round community college draft pick of the Dodgers who has worked his way up the system over the past five years.

Last season at AA Chattanooga, Shebler posted an OPS of .921, hitting 28 homers in 560 plate appearances. Given how he’s hit at every level he’s played, I would imagine he gets a look at AAA this season. Even with Matt Kemp gone, it would take a huge number of guys going down for a player like Schebler, a left-handed slugger, to get moved up this season.

We all know most of the guys who we’ll see on the field for the Dodgers this year, but it’s probably a good time of the year to review the 40-man roster, especially those players who don’t have numbers listed.

First, let’s go over some random pitchers. Staying in line with a theme of financial and organizational flexibility, the Dodgers didn’t go after big-name starters like Max Scherzer and James Shields this off-season. That said, they do have a lot of relative unknowns who could make an impact both in spot-starts and in relief this upcoming season. Here are four guys you may not know much about.

Yimi Garcia

Garcia saw a little time with the Dodgers last year. In just eight games and just ten innings, he posted an ERA of 1.80. The righty also posted a 3.10 ERA and a 1.25 WHIP in Albuquerque, where he spent most of the season.

If the Dodgers are looking for some real bullpen help this season, Garcia could be a part of that. At some point.

Here’s a profile of Garcia from Eric Stephen at TrueBlueLA that was posted almost a year ago.

Mike Bolsinger

Bolsinger spent last season with the Diamondbacks, where he started nine games and wasn’t very good. The Dodgers saw enough in him to pick him up in the offseason. Presumably, he’s someone who can provide a few starts and, hopefully for Dodger fans, give the team a chance to win.

They got him from a division rival for a song, which would make any positive contribution he makes even more satisfying for fans who love to see that Arizona team twist in the wind. Depth, depth, flexibility, depth.

Chris Hatcher

Hatcher is a relief pitcher with four years of experience with the Marlins, though only one of them can really be classified as “good.” Last season, he pitched 56 decent innings and managed a K/BB ratio of more than 4/1. Hatcher’s addition should also help the Dodgers’ bullpen depth, though nothing is ever guaranteed when it comes to brining in relief pitchers.

Hatcher is 30 years old and is a converted catcher like his new bullpen-mate Kenley Jansen. He made the news last year when he was suspended for fighting a minor league teammate. Hatcher at-worst interesting and at-best like a character out of the bullpen who the Dodgers and their fans could really grow to depend on this year.

Adam Liberatore

Liberatore was drafted by the Andrew Friedman-led Rays organization and has yet to see the big leagues. At AAA Durham last season, he put up a .892 WHIP and 1.66 ERA. He is a left-handed relief pitcher with presumably good stuff, which is always a commodity one would like to have. It’s a little odd that Liberatore will be 28 this year and hasn’t seen the big leagues with numbers like he had.

Liberatore has a Tommy John surgery in his history, but it didn’t seem to affect his performance in the minors last year. Perhaps this is the season and the team for him to finally make it to the big-time, where he could be very effective — especially against left-handed hitters.

Chickasaw Bricktown Ballpark in Oklahoma City should be about the biggest stadium Urias pitches in this season. By Ensign beedrill (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons

The more I think about it, the more I hope we do not see Julio Urias in Los Angeles, pitching for the Dodgers this season.

Let me put it this way — Having a plan that included even the possibility of bringing Urias up to the majors this season would be a sign of desperation. I’ve stated over and over this offseason that this organization doesn’t grasp at straws anymore. They are calculated, not desperate. They drive the market, they don’t react to it. They have lots of starting pitcher options for this season. They don’t need to rush a kid who would be a graduating high school senior.

While it was REALLY fun when it happened, I’m not sure Andrew Friedman’s front office would have wanted to bring up a 22 year-old Yasiel Puig in 2013 for 100-plus games. While they might have deprived all of us of an amazing final few months of the season in Puig’s case, they would be making a great decision to keep Urias down on the farm this year.

This team has a plan. Urias is almost certainly in that plan. It just shouldn’t be this season.

Salary arbitration.

It’s as engrained into a baseball nerd’s mind as the trade deadline, the draft, and the day that rosters expand. There are four Dodgers who are arbitration-eligible this season. They are listed in Dustin Nosler’s excellent post from yesterday on Dodgers Digest here.

The Dodgers’ front office (Andrew Friedman) has a history in Tampa Bay of going to the hearing stage once arbitration is filed for. If you’re a player, an arbitration hearing is probably not a great place to be, especially if you take things personally. In a hearing, it’s the team’s job to tell everyone why they don’t think you’re worth as much as you think you are. Can you think of any other profession where your employer gets to go on and on about how you’re not really that good, and then you have to follow that up by working for that employer for the foreseeable future? I cannot.

But I digress.

Justin Turner is one of four arbitration-eligible Dodgers. By slgckgc on Flickr (Originally posted to Flickr as “Justin Turner”), via Wikimedia Commons

While slightly less-dominant than 2013, Jansen still put up good numbers for the Dodgers in 2014, posting 44 saves and a 5.32 K/BB ratio while being the only reliever the Dodgers could trust. At all.

Last year, Jansen made $4.3 million while increasing his save totals by almost 60 percent. Beyond Jansen, the Dodgers’ list of arb-eligible players is pretty short. Justin Turner filled-in decently last season all around the infield. Newcomers Juan Nicasio and Chris Heisey (out of Messiah College, BTW) are also eligible, despite being new to the Dodgers’ system.

The trend lately has been for the Dodgers (and most other teams) to settle arbitration cases before they go to a hearing. The last player they went to a hearing with was Joe Beimel, eight years ago. Some teams, however, are well-known for hard stances on arbitration. Players who do not reach an agreement by the deadline in these organizations are not negotiated-with again until the hearing itself.

This was the way the Rays operated under Friedman. Whether he brings that to the Dodgers is one of the many organizational questions we’ll get answers to over the next 12 weeks.

Having Max Scherzer or James Shields would make the Dodgers’ staff amazing. Think about it. Kershaw, Greinke, Scherzer, Ryu, and then Anderson/McCarthy splitting the number 5 role.

It’s a dream.

Adding a pitcher like Scherzer to the Dodgers’ already stacked-staff would be a dream. There are probably better ways to spend their money though. By Keith Allison from Hanover, MD, USA, via Wikimedia Commons

But it’s an inefficient one, at least according to Buster Olney. Scherzer is asking for a $200 million contract. The Dodgers’ rotation already has five starters. Also, think about what you could get for $200 million.

Here is a list of free agents at the end of 2015 (click here to see who’s still left for 2014).

Interesting guys left for this season include relief pitchers like Joba Chamberlain and Phil Coke. Even with some offseason moves, you can never have enough bullpen depth. While Scherzer is definitely the highest profile name out there and there is a significant drop in talent after Shields.

Notice that, while Zack Greinke is on the 2015 list, so are some other players that could be interesting. Ben Zobrist has history with Andrew Friedman. Ian Desmond will be a 30 year-old shortstop if Corey Seager needs to move to third base to replace Juan Uribe.

As far as pitching, things could get really interesting. If Greinke opts out, they’d have an interesting decision to make on him. Other guys could be available too, including Clay Bucholz, Yovani Gallardo, Rick Porcello, David Price, John Lackey, Jordan Zimmerman, and Scott Kazmir, to name a few. With Price, Gallardo, and Zimmerman at the top of this list, a fan’s mind can wander. While Price is the only one on this list that would stack-up with Zack in my mind, a team like the Dodgers with money to spend could really think about saddling up to the buffet and continuing to add solid pitching depth — with or without Greinke.

For the price of Scherzer, perhaps the Dodgers can get a number of good years Greinke has left and still have enough left over for one of the other pitchers on next year’s list or someone like Desmond or Zobrist to play key roles.

Andrew Friedman’s one constant since he took over has been to make the Dodgers a more nimble organization that can operate with less restrictions and lots of flexibility when it comes to making moves. While signing Scherzer would be really, really fun, it would go against this trend. It wouldn’t be efficient.

Then again, isn’t Friedman the master of market inefficiencies?

On the heels of the Dodgers making a bunch of moves, Owen and Jesse break-down the moves. So as not to appear completely biased toward the Andrew Friedman regime, we also brought-in fellow Dodger fan, Kevin to give the potential down-side of the Matt Kemp trade.

I better type fast. Before I’m done, the Dodgers might make another trade.

Here’s what we know — For almost two months leading the Dodgers’ front office, Andrew Freidman and company made very few public moves. Then, yesterday, the dam broke. Perhaps it just started to break.

At any rate, the Dodgers went from a shortstop-less team with a few big holes to what looks now like a team that is a lot more efficient.

Is this the New York Stock Exchange or the Dodgers’ front office over the past 24 hours. By Ryan Lawler (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Instead of a question mark at catcher, it looks like they’ll roll with Yasmani Grandal. (Perhaps Grandal is a question mark unto himself. But he will be a question mark with a high upside).

Instead of four outfielders and a bloated payroll, the Dodgers have made room for a young player

They’ve also made themselves better defensively up the middle. Replacing Matt Kemp, Hanley Ramirez, and Dee Gordon with Joc Pederson, Jimmy Rollins, and Howie Kendrick will result in a completely re-tooled and unquestionably better middle of the field defense. Giving Andre Ethier and Carl Crawford defined roles could do wonders, especially for Ethier who Scott Van Slyke starts to fit-in as a potential platoon player with. Without Kemp, the combinations start to fit better together — though trading Ethier or Crawford could still be in the cards. Joc Pederson is almost surely going to get a chance to play every day in center field and Yasiel Puig will man right field. That leaves one position for Etheir, Crawford, and Scott Van Slyke to somehow split. OK, there is still some inefficiency with outfielders, but not like before… .

For an organization who looked to the “nerds” to take the next step, Andrew Friedman and his geek squad might be bringing balance to the force.

Of all the players who they’ve acquired, I’m most excited about replacing Gordon with Kendrick. Quietly, the 31 year-old Kendrick has been a force for the Angels in recent years. Remember, the Angels team he was on last season had the best record in baseball. Gordon was a fan favorite — a young, fast, energetic player who I always loved to see on the base paths.

But Gordon’s peripheral numbers aren’t great and Friedman must have seen him as having had something like a career year last season. So he sold high and got a lot in return from Miami.

Kemp seems to have also been sold high. The Dodgers didn’t get as much back for him, though Yasmani Grandal might be due for a breakout year. Getting rid of Kemp is a possible roll of the dice, but they also get rid of about $70 of the money he is owed over the next few years, which brings us to the really fun part of this equation — the Dodgers, despite their bloated payroll — are starting to make themselves a lot more financially flexible without completely ruining the major-league product on the field. In fact, along with being cheaper, they might be even better already.

The final chip probably has yet to fall. A trade for Cole Hamels is heating up the rumor mill. So are free agents James Shields and Max Scherzer. If the reported trades all go through, the Dodgers have positioned themselves with prospects and freed-up cash to make a run at any of these three.

I haven’t even mentioned Brandon McCarthy, whose deal helps with depth at the back end of the rotation. That was an issue last season for the team.

Assuming Kemp, Rollins, McCarthy deals become official, #Dodgers will have made 6 transactions involving 19 players in less than 24 hours

— Bill Plunkett (@billplunkettocr) December 11, 2014

Lots of Dodgers fans are excited. Many are nervous about losing fan-favorites Kemp and Gordon.

Here are links to a few articles (below) that have put me at ease recently. Remember Dodger fans — don’t get too worked up quite yet. There are probably other moves to be made and, by the time you finish reading this, it will be incomplete at-best and possibly inaccurate. Because this Dodgers front office is making moves.

Marlins Pay Steep Price to not get Better – From Fangraphs

The older and better Dodgers Middle Infield – From Fangraphs

Dodgers, McCarthy reportedly near 4-year deal – From Dodgers.com

What are the Dodgers even doing? – From Deadspin

It’s true — either the Giants or Cardinals will represent the National League in the World Series this year. That the Dodgers will not remains the saddest truth in this fan’s sports world.

This morning, though, there is a glimmer of something for sullen Dodgers fans to get excited about. It comes in the form of an announcement.

The Dodgers have hired Andrew Friedman as President, Baseball Operations. Ned Colletti will stay as Senior Advisor to Stan Kasten.

— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) October 14, 2014

Then I did this.

OK, Friedman won’t change the team immediately, but it’s the beginning of the offseason. The fact is, the Dodgers could look a whole lot different by the time March rolls around in Glendale. By then, this organization — the baseball part of it anyway — will surely have his stamp.

Ned Colletti wasn’t bad bad. He somehow found a way to hang around and bridge the largest ownership gap in the history of sports, having success all along the way. Most of the time, I’m a fan of consistency. I like a GM who stays with his guys and allows them to do what he hired them to do. Colletti’s time, though, had run its course. It was time to change the way the Dodgers were operating. Consistency had turned to stagnation and change, in this case, was the right thing to do.

Colletti will still be around — as a Senior Advisor to Stan Kasten — but the management of everything baseball-related now belongs to Friedman.

For today, my Twitter feed will provide my entertainment. Mike Petriello, Chad Moriyama, Sons of Steve Garvey, Dodgers Digest, DJ Short, Molly Knight, Alanna Rizzo, Craig Calcaterra, Jeff Sullivan, Rob Neyer, Howard Cole and every other baseball personality I follow will certainly have a take and an angle. So will @DodgerzGM who has changed his visible name to DodgerzSeniorAdvisor. It’s the best parody account on Twitter.

They’ll all have reactions that are more thought-through and worth reading, but mine is simply an exhale. That nasty, cold, bitter pit in the bottom of my stomach that’s been there since Game 4 of the NLDS — it might be dissipating. Good deal.

Some fun Tweets about the Friedman thing from today:

Andrew Friedman as soon as he gets to Los Angeles: http://t.co/9w8JH2QnQB

— Cespedes Family BBQ (@CespedesBBQ) October 14, 2014

The toughest thing about this transition is figuring out how to change my wifi password from G1ANTS2010 to G1ANTS2014.

— DodgerzSeniorAdvisor (@DodgerzGM) October 14, 2014

Fingers crossed that Andrew Friedman hires me to be the GM.

— DodgerzSeniorAdvisor (@DodgerzGM) October 14, 2014

I'm not exactly what a Senior Advisor is, but I imagine I'll be working with a lot of old folks.

— DodgerzSeniorAdvisor (@DodgerzGM) October 14, 2014

Colletti: /eats $15 reuben Friedman: /bag lunch Colletti: Friedman: Both: /laughter Friedman: /burns $100 bill Friedman: /tosses into woods

— Jeff Sullivan (@based_ball) October 14, 2014

btw, here's actual data showing that (good) baseball executives have been wildly underpaid: http://t.co/HXd7Ek1Xnm

— robneyer (@robneyer) October 14, 2014

Bonus: Dodgers' Friedman announcement upstages Cards/Giants.

— Sons of Steve Garvey (@sosgsosg) October 14, 2014

If it wasn't before, @jonahkeri's The Extra 2% is now required reading, Dodger fans http://t.co/Z9IOiFDPr6

— Mike Petriello (@mike_petriello) October 14, 2014

Don's gone by the end of the week.

— Howard Cole (@Howard_Cole) October 14, 2014