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:
Top Third Base Defenders, 2024
And here’s a list of the top third basemen on plays where they have to move left:
Top Third Base Defenders Going Left, 2024
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.
