PHOENIX –– Two years ago, James Tibbs III was a first-round draft pick.
Last summer, he was traded twice in a two-month span.
When asked this week how he processed such sudden whiplash, the Dodgers outfield prospect sighed, then shook his head.
“I didn’t,” he said. “It really hurt. It really sucked.”
From that pain, however, came perspective.
And this spring, he is using it to author an auspicious new chapter in Dodger blue ink.
“I’m very thankful for it,” Tibbs said in an interview with The California Post. “Because it taught me so much.”
At 23 years old, Tibbs is one of the youngest players in the Dodgers’ big-league camp. But he’s also among the most intriguing, entering play Thursday with a .304 batting average, two home runs and five RBIs in 10 Cactus League games.
In a farm system loaded with outfield talent, he could be the first to break into the big leagues, as well.
“He’s on our radar,” manager Dave Roberts said Monday, after Tibbs belted a 458-foot home run, in a left-on-left matchup no less, for what has been his biggest highlight so far in camp. “I wouldn’t be surprised at all if, at some point this year, he makes his debut.”
Reaching the majors, of course, has always been part of the plan for the Florida State product and Marietta, Georgia native.
Doing so with the Dodgers, though, was not what he envisioned when he went 13th overall to the San Francisco Giants back in 2024.
At that point, Tibbs had played for three teams his entire amateur career: “One high school, one college, one travel organization,” he said.
Being shuffled between three different organizations last year –– when he was initially traded from San Francisco to the Boston Red Sox as part of the Rafael Devers deal on June 15, then flipped to the Dodgers as part of the return package for Dustin May at the July 31 deadline –– left him feeling “beat down” and “kicked in the mouth.”
“I didn’t understand the business side of baseball,” he said. “I don’t think you’re ever really fully prepared for that stuff.”
While Tibbs said both trades surprised him, the first was a harder adjustment.
After starting the season decently with the Giants’ high-A affiliate in Eugene, Ore. (.246 average, 12 home runs, .857 OPS in 57 games), he switched coasts and took a step up in competition after being acquired by the Red Sox, waking into unfamiliar surroundings with their double-A team in Portland, Maine.
Over the next month, a slump followed. In 30 games, Tibbs batted just .207 with one long ball.
“I was the only one (of the four players the Giants traded in the Devers deal) to go to Portland,” he said. “It was a whole new environment.”
Though Tibbs saw his name in further trade rumors leading up to the deadline a few weeks later, he figured his struggles would preclude other clubs from targeting him. Instead, on deadline day, he got the news he was going to the Dodgers (whose front office includes Farhan Zaidi, the Giants’ GM at the time Tibbs was drafted in 2024).
Once again, he was packing up and moving on –– giving away much of the Red Sox gear he’d received when he arrived only 46 days prior.
“It was definitely a weird scenario,” he said.
This time, Tibbs didn’t go alone, shipped to the Dodgers’ double-A affiliate in Tulsa, Okla., alongside one of his new Portland teammates, fellow outfielder Zach Ehrhard (who is also in Dodgers camp this spring, sitting just a few stalls down from Tibbs in the team’s Camelback Ranch clubhouse).
Still, the shock factor was jarring.
“It really took a nose-dive for me, trying to figure out how to be OK with not being OK, being comfortable with not being comfortable,” he said.
And yet, when looking back in hindsight now, he has come to appreciate the lessons it all taught him.
“It’s like, whatever happens, I can either let the circumstances define me, or I can step up and figure out how to punch back,” he said. “And I use that metaphor because, you kinda have no other option. You’re in some place you don’t know, with different people, different circumstances. And you can either let the situation get to you, or you can figure out how to be better because of it.”
Be better, Tibbs was upon joining the Dodgers.
In 36 games to close the year in Tulsa, he hit .269 with seven home runs, 32 RBIs and a .900 OPS, showing improved pop to go along with his renowned plate discipline.
Over the offseason, Dodgers officials raved about his progress, hopeful that the deal for him and Ehrhard –– in exchange for May, a pending free agent who’d been inconsistent in his return from surgery and was being squeezed out of the team’s rotation by the time the deadline rolled around –– will utimately prove to be a long-term steal.
“He just loves competing,” Roberts said. “When I picture a gritty, tough ball player, he’s one of those guys.”
Indeed, those are the traits Tibbs was forced to forge last year.
And now, as he glanced around his new clubhouse this week and considered his brightening future with the Dodgers, he could reflect upon it all with smile –– grateful for the place his circuitous path brought him.
“It’s just been a blessing to be here,” he said. “I feel like I’m right where I belong. And that’s a cool feeling, for somebody who’s been on the road a lot.”