Dodgers promote PCL MVP Ryan Ward for first major league call-up

The Dodgers finally moved on the hitter who made ignoring him impossible. Ryan Ward, the reigning Pacific Coast League MVP, got his first major league call-up after seven minor league seasons and a Triple-A start that left little room for hesitation.

Ward earned the promotion by forcing the issue at Oklahoma City and then making the case even louder this spring. Through April 17, he was hitting .324 with a 1.020 OPS, four homers, 14 RBI and three stolen bases in 68 at-bats. The power was real, but so was the carryover from last year: a 445-foot leadoff homer on April 16 and a four-hit game with a homer on April 8 showed he was not just surviving at Triple-A, he was controlling it.

That is what separates a nice minor league season from a call to Los Angeles. Ward was already the headliner in 2025, when he led all of Minor League Baseball with 36 home runs, 122 RBI, 73 extra-base hits and 315 total bases. His .290/.380/.557 line helped him win PCL MVP and made him the third Oklahoma City player in the Bricktown era to take home league MVP honors, joining Michael Busch in 2023 and Nelson Cruz in 2008. Oklahoma City also said Ward set Bricktown-era single-season records in hits, runs and RBI.

The Dodgers had already made room for this possibility. Ward was added to the 40-man roster on Nov. 6, 2025, to protect him from the Rule 5 Draft, and he told MLB.com in February that he had been with the organization seven years and was entering his eighth. Drafted by Los Angeles in the eighth round in 2019 out of Bryant University, the Worcester, Massachusetts, native had spent nearly all of that time waiting for this exact opening.

The timing makes sense because the Dodgers’ outfield has still looked unfinished even after they gave Kyle Tucker a four-year, $240 million deal. Early in the season, the active group included Tucker, Teoscar Hernández, Andy Pages and Alex Call, while Mookie Betts, Tommy Edman and Kiké Hernández were either unavailable or creating more uncertainty. Ward’s promotion gives Los Angeles another actual answer, not just another body, and it comes with a bat that has already bullied Triple-A pitching long enough to justify the leap.