Why does STEAMER hate Josh Rojas?
Josh Rojas had a great stint in his short time in Seattle after being traded to the Mariners. STEAMER sees him being worse than that in 2024
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Say that you acquire a guy at the trade deadline. After two really good seasons, he was having a bit of a rough go. You still traded for him as part of a larger package, and he ends up coming through for your team with a strong finish to the season. Sounds like a good place to be in as an organization, to have a player who looks like they figured it back out, right? That describes Josh Rojas after getting to the Mariners.
STEAMER, though, sees him being bad in 2024, and this is one of those ones that I just don't really understand. After two really good seasons (fWAR of 1.8 and 2.7), he came to Seattle and had a 1.2 fWAR in just 46 games. He struggled in Arizona, actually putting up a negative number over the first part of the season.
All so often, when looking at players, we look at the overall, the majority of what they've done over the last few years instead of just looking at the negative. Sometimes it backfires (I still don't understand what happened to Kolton Wong), but most of the time players revert back to the norm. Why wouldn't STEAMER project that for Rojas? Instead, they have him doing worse throughout the entirety of 2024 than he did in his time with the Mariners in 2023.
Josh Rojas: .241/.316/.359,11 SB, 7 HR, 40 R, 34 RBI, 0.8 fWAR, 91 games.
Maybe the argument is that he is part time, so he is only playing about 60% of the season. You up it to full time, and that number bumps to 1.3 or so if he gets to 145 games. That's still worse than 2021, worse than 2022, and just a tick higher than the 46 games stretch with the Mariners last year.
Can someone please explain to me why? Cause I don't get it at all. Why give so much credence to that rough stretch in Arizona? Wouldn't it make more sense to go off what he has done the rest of his career? I think we see something a lot more like the 2021 season for Rojas. Not the nearly 3 War season, but something that hovers right around 2, and possibly just a bit higher.
I think the Mariners are going to see a good season from Rojas, one that gives them exactly what they want from the bottom of the lineup and the second base position. Let's just hope that I'm right about it, and not STEAMER.