Julio Urias, one of MLB’s top prospects, debuts Friday

Listen, we know it’s tough to catch up on everything happening in the baseball world each morning. There are all kinds of stories, rumors, game coverage and Vines of dudes getting hit in the beans every day. Trying to find all of it while on your way to work or sitting at your desk just isn’t easy. It’s okay, though, we’re going to do the heavy lifting for you each morning, and find the things you need to see from within the SB Nation baseball network, as well as from elsewhere. Please hold your applause until the end, or at least until after you subscribe to the newsletter.

The Dodgers’ rotation is not good. It’s part of the reason they are just 25-23 and 4.5 games behind the Giants in the NL West. The lineup hasn’t helped, as it’s been well below-average, but there’s not a whole lot the Dodgers can do there besides hope their capable players start to look the part again. The rotation, though, has room for improvement. Only two starters in it -- Clayton Kershaw and Kenta Maeda -- have been above-average to this point. Dodgers’ starters have combined for a 3.51 ERA, but that’s almost exclusively Kershaw’s doing: subtract the lefty from the mix, and the rotation’s ERA jumps all the way to a below-average 4.27 that’s even worse than it looks when you consider where the Dodgers play.

That’s why Julio Urias, who makes his MLB debut on Friday, is such a bright spot for Los Angeles. He’s all of 19 years old, but he was the best or second-best pitching prospect in the minors before the season, depending on who you asked. He dominated the hitter-friendly Pacific Coast League, posting a 1.10 ERA with nearly 10 strikeouts per nine -- the average PCL pitcher has a 4.36 ERA, and 19 is younger than many of the players the Dodgers will draft in two weeks, never mind a typical Triple-A hurler. He has a 27-inning scoreless streak going, and about all he has left to learn at the level is how to pitch deep into games. That’s no small thing, and he’ll have to figure it out in the majors now.

Urias has averaged just 74 pitches per outing, and topped out at 82 in a start earlier this month. He never saw the seventh inning in the PCL, so while he’s clearly dominant through his first 75 pitches or so, we still don’t know what he’s like in the 25 after that. Usually, pitchers ramp up to the 90-and-above threshold by the time they’re in Triple-A, but usually, they aren’t teenagers at that time. He’s already almost halfway to his career-high in innings, so the idea of the Dodgers using him in the rotation all year is unrealistic, but he might be able to help them bridge to the next wave of help before he hits his limit. That could be enough.