Phillies news and rumors 4/22: Johan Rojas looking much better at the plate

Johan Rojas has started to turn the corner offensively. (Rich von Biberstein/Icon Sportswire)

The walls were not closing in on Johan Rojas, because eight games is too small a sample and there is no obvious backup plan, but the center-field situation as of April 7 was getting untenable. The 23-year-old was 1-for-22, with one hard-hit ball (above 95 mph) — and it was a groundout. The numbers weren’t good, and neither were the visuals.

So Rob Thomson gave him the day off on April 7. It looks like it’s worked.

Since then, Rojas is 13-for-31, good for a .419 batting average. Even if you omit the three-hit game immediately after that off day, he’s hitting .370 since.

The slug isn’t there; he has just two doubles on the year, which is half his paltry number of walks. But given how Rojas looked to start the year — and given how little the Phillies really need him to do at the plate to justify his otherworldly defense — the progress is more than the Phillies could’ve asked for as of two weeks ago.

So what’s behind the improvement? Here’s one theory, and it’s not that Rojas is seeing more pitches. He’s actually seeing fewer. Since April 7, Rojas is seeing 3.06 pitches per plate appearance, way down from the 3.64 he was averaging until then. He’s being more aggressive early in counts instead of getting himself into deep pitcher’s counts, where his greatest liability at the MLB level — pitch recognition — is ultra-exposed. The numbers bear out in his strikeout totals: Six in 25 plate appearances before April 7th; two in 34 since.

Sunday was a perfect example how of that approach can benefit Rojas.

In his first at bat, Rojas took a ball, then took two straight sliders down the middle to get to 1-2. He then waved at a slider in the dirt for strike three.

In his second at bat, Rojas took a ball (which, admittedly, was on the black), then fouled off a fastball up in the zone, then blooped a slider into shallow left for a single.

In his third, Rojas took a fastball way (way) below the zone for, naturally, a strike. He was all over the first actual strike he saw, a fastball the following pitch, which he hit 101.3 mph — into the ground, though, for a groundout on a diving snag by Braden Shewmake. Still.

And to cap his day offensively, Rojas took a first-pitch fastball down the middle in the seventh — but then pounced on a pitch in nearly the same spot for a single the other way.

Maybe the solution to Rojas’ pitch-recognition issue isn’t to see more pitches and hope he acclimates to MLB-caliber stuff. Maybe it’s to swing early enough that it doesn’t hurt him as much. Whether that’s a conscious effort he, hitting coach Kevin Long and the Phillies have made the past couple weeks, or whether it’s just a convenient coincidence, one thing is for sure: This version of Rojas in the nine-hole will play.

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