A Sign of the Times: Michael Conforto Joins Dodgers as Team Navigate New Financial Reality

The Dodgers have added Michael Conforto, or at least agreed to terms with the deal not yet officially finalized. But he likely won’t be the last outfielder they bring in this offseason (or maybe even this week). What’s left is key to the Conforto addition in more ways than one.

First, the long-anticipated reunion with Teoscar Hernández should still happen. It was wise for Hernández’s camp to wait until after Juan Soto signed to make a decision, as the handful of suitors who missed out on Soto can now shift attention to Hernández or Anthony Santander, the two best outfielders remaining on the free agent market.

Signing Conforto “isn’t expected to take the Dodgers out of the running for Hernández,” reported Jack Harris and Mike DiGiovanna at the Los Angeles Times. Similar sentiments were also reported by Fabian Ardaya at The Athletic and Mark Feinsand of MLB.com.

There will be time for adding others, but for now let’s look at what Conforto brings to the Dodgers.

In many ways, he’s akin to Hernández, though they bat on opposite sides of the plate. Hernández joined the Dodgers after struggling in his pitcher-friendly home park in Seattle in 2023, hitting just .217/.263/.380 with an 81 wRC+ at T-Mobile Park, compared to .295/.344/.486 with a 126 wRC+ on the road. He won a Silver Slugger Award with the Dodgers, and led National League outfielders in home runs (33) and RBI (99) in 2024.

“Everything comes down to confidence at home plate,” Hernández said last January during his introductory Zoom call after signing with the Dodgers. “If you watched my numbers, there was a big gap between playing at home [in Seattle] and playing away. It was more getting confidence at home, trying to do the same things I did when playing on the road.”

During his two-year deal with the Giants, Conforto hit .225/.308/.353 with an 88 wRC+ at Oracle Park in San Francisco and .248/.332/.471 with a 119 wRC+ on the road. In 2024, 17 of his 20 home runs were hit away from home.

Batted-ball data suggested Conforto was a better hitter than his final numbers showed in 2024, when he hit .237/.309/.450 with a 112 wRC+. Per Baseball Savant, Conforto’s expected batting average was .257, with a .479 expected slugging percentage. His xwOBA was also .350, compared to his actual wOBA of .327.

Andrew Baggarly of The Athletic, who covered Conforto for the last two seasons, said “Somebody was going to make a smart investment in Michael Conforto and I’m not surprised to see it’s the Dodgers.”

What Conforto brings to the Dodgers is a left-handed-hitting outfielder, an area in which the team suffered in 2024.

Jason Heyward was the Dodgers’ platoon bat from the left side in the outfield, but was sidelined by back tightness and a bone bruise in his knee in separate injured-list stints. He was released in August after falling down the depth chart. James Outman was unable to duplicate his strong rookie campaign of 2023, struggling mightily out of the gate this season, and by mid-May was back in the minors for the bulk of the remainder of the season.

Those two accounted for 72 percent of the Dodgers’ plate appearances as an outfielder by left-handed batters. The production of the lefty outfield group as a whole was quite bad, hitting just .176/.251/.298 with a 57 wRC+ that ranked dead last among 30 major league teams.

Conforto in his career .257/.359/.479 hitter with a 128 wRC+ against right-handed pitchers, compared to .232/.314/.392 with a 96 wRC+ against southpaws. He did hit better against lefties in 2024 (145 wRC+ compared to 102 vs. right-handers), but that was an outlier for him.

With the Giants, Conforto was used as more of a platoon hitter, starting half of the 78 games against lefty starters while active during his two years in San Francisco, compared to starting 73 percent of the time against lefties during his last five years as a regular with the Mets (2017-21). After returning from a right hamstring strain this June, Conforto started only 11 of 28 games (39.3 percent) against southpaw starters, compared to 67 starts in 74 games (90.5 percent) against right-handers.

We don’t yet know whether the Dodgers will platoon Conforto, as the roster isn’t yet finalized. But he does offer the potential of outfield production from the left side of the plate, something that was sorely missing in 2024.