Josh Rojas, Picking Machine

At first glance, Josh Rojas and Derek Zoolander don’t have a lot in common. Rojas is a third baseman, while Zoolander is a fictional male model. Rojas is from Arizona, while Zoolander is from an unnamed coal mining town in Appalachia. They have different jobs, different lives, and again, one is a fictional character. But one thing unites the two: Their careers took off when they learned how to go left.

In 2022, Rojas settled into a role as an everyday third baseman after years of bouncing between positions. Just one problem: He was one of the worst defenders in the major leagues at the hot corner. That was the consensus of scouts when he was a prospect, and defensive metrics bore it out. He particularly struggled ranging towards second base. Statcast breaks defensive opportunities up based on which direction a player has to move to make the play. When Rojas was moving to his right, forward, or backward, he was one run above average defensively. When he went left, he was seven runs below average.

It didn’t feel like a small sample fluke. In 2021, Rojas played all across the diamond and struggled going left at every position. In 2023, he played more second than third and again put up his worst defensive numbers when moving left. That was true on both the Diamondbacks and the Mariners – he got traded halfway through the season. His defense looked acceptable overall, but going left remained a problem.

A lot can change in an offseason. Here’s a list of the top defensive third basemen in 2024 according to Statcast:

And here’s a list of the top third basemen on plays where they have to move left:

That’s some kind of change. From his debut in 2019 through the end of 2023, Rojas was one of the worst in the game when it came to moving left. Now, admittedly in a small sample, he’s one of the best.

Defensive metrics are prone to extreme variation in small samples. That’s just the name of the game. No matter how well you measure, noise is an inherent problem. There aren’t enough observations, and the observations we do have are heavily dependent on factors outside of a fielder’s control. In other words, Rojas’ sudden improvement could be a fluke.

It doesn’t seem like one to me, though. Just listen to what the Mariners are saying, for one. Infield coach Perry Hill has a reputation for getting the most out of all of his defenders. He talked to MLB.com’s Daniel Kramer about the improvements Rojas has made this year. He first praised Rojas’ overall consistency and footwork, but he had some specific comments too. “The backhand was an issue that we needed to address in spring training,” Hill told Kramer. “And he did. He worked on it, and he’s made some really nice backhanded plays so far this year.”

Rojas never struggled on backhand picks – moving right – in Statcast’s estimation. But defense is interconnected. Changing your positioning or setup in an attempt to protect a weak backhand can introduce other problems. Heck, just having to move around between positions can make it harder to make simple plays. Between daily drilling and parking Rojas at third – he’s played the vast majority of his innings there this year – he and the Mariners have seemingly addressed a weakness.

This is not the place to stop our investigation, however. After all, Rojas received praise for his excellent defense at third in 2023, with a lot of quotes that sound the same as this year’s, before struggling again at the position, though he looked better at second.

What’s changed? In watching Rojas, one thing I noticed is that he’s playing closer to the plate in general this year. The data bear that out. Here’s his starting depth, as measured by Statcast, at third base. I’ve split it out by handedness, since shifts make depth against lefties a more nebulous concept:

That’s interesting to me, and I think it makes sense for one key reason: Rojas has historically struggled with making consistent throws across the diamond. He makes more throwing errors than fielding errors, and while errors are an inherently subjective statistic, they still provide some useful information. I speculate that some of Rojas’ challenges have come from needing to make deep throws on balls up the middle.

Statcast breaks out plays by estimated success rate, which lets me tell you this: On plays the league converts at an 80% clip or better, Rojas was abysmal from 2021 through 2023. We’re talking about going to his left specifically in this article, but it’s just as true overall. He was six outs below average going left on easy plays, and 15 outs below average on easy plays overall. On the tough stuff, he was five outs above average, mostly moving to his right.

Combine that with the fact that most of his errors are of the throwing variety, and you’ll start to get an idea of what’s going on. Plenty of his problems on easy plays came with him playing deep third base and having something go wrong, whether it was not being able to get the throw off in time, sending it offline, or just trying to go too fast and messing up everything as a result. His worst ending positions on these 80%-plus plays were basically just deep third base:

Now let’s look at a chart of his 80%-plus plays in 2024. Rojas has been phenomenally successful on them, converting 99% of his options. He’s also fielding the ball in a different spot on average:

The relative sizes and colors of those boxes both tell a story. Rojas is fielding fewer balls with his feet near the outfield grass, and more coming in and to the left to cut the ball off. He’s getting easier throws out of that change. That matters a lot for someone whose biggest struggles have always come on plays that the average third baseman makes easily.

Compare Rojas to Matt Chapman, perhaps the strongest-armed third baseman in the game, and this will make even more sense. Chapman has been 15 outs above average on easy plays from 2021 through 2024, the same time frame we’re looking at for Rojas. He’s done so while staying far back:

From 2021 through 2024, Chapman has played three times as many innings as Rojas at third. He’s made 18 throwing errors to Rojas’ 14. He combines a cannon arm and pinpoint accuracy. Thus it’s completely reasonable for him to field the majority of his chances relatively deep. It just lines up well with his skill set.

Before this year, Rojas was fielding the ball in similar locations to Chapman. That just doesn’t make sense. No third baseman in the majors with 1,500 fielding innings from 2021-2024 makes throwing errors more frequently than Rojas. Chapman is one of the very best. There’s a ton more to defense than just not throwing the ball away – but throwing the ball away was weighing Rojas down, and he was fielding balls in positions where he needed to make strong accurate throws. It was just a bad setup.

I don’t think Rojas’ current form will continue, because again, he’s been one of the most error-prone third basemen in the majors for years. He’s still made three throwing errors this year, but all three have been forgivable, do-or-die throws against speedy runners or tricky hops at impossible angles. This play is an acceptable miss:

This one, from 2021, is not:

You should always be skeptical of these types of simple explanations. There just hasn’t been enough baseball played to be sure. Maybe Rojas is just uncommonly healthy right now, and the next time he feels slightly off in the morning, he’ll revert to his old ways. Maybe he’s just on a throwing hot streak. Maybe pure chance has meant he hasn’t had many deep balls to field, and he’ll be back to his old ways in no time.

I’m a believer, though. There’s a consistent through line to Rojas’ improvement that makes me more likely to believe it. Standing closer to home plate increases your throwing consistency. Playing the same position consistently instead of flying around the diamond improves your overall fielding consistency. Drilling with an excellent infield coach improves your consistency. And what we’ve seen so far is how Rojas looks when he’s more consistent. He’s never had a particular problem with tough plays, and now he’s making the easy ones. Sounds like a successful model to me!