I hadn’t really thought about Kendry Rojas this season. He was shut down in early April with a core injury, and I wanted to give him time to get back on his feet and to settle in at his new level before considering writing about him. Well, four starts and 18.2 innings into his AA career, he’s struck out 56 and walked 7, and his 37.3 K-BB% is the best among all pitchers with at least 15 AA innings this season. So now seemed like an opportune time.
StatCast thinks Rojas throws both a sinker and a four
seamer, but to me it looks like one pitch (a four seamer) on which he sometimes gets more tailing arm side run than others. The ‘four seam’ version has plus riding life (18 inches of induced vertical break) with about 7 inches of run, while the ‘sinker’ has only about an inch more drop but four more inches of run. Last year, both versions sat 92-94. In his brief A ball rehab stint in June, he was averaging 95.5 and regularly touching 97. Part of that may have to do with slightly shorter rehab outings, but he was still bumping the top of that range in the sixth inning of his June 26th start. It’s a pitch that flashed plus last year and looks to be settling there regularly now.
His breaking ball is a harder slider that varies between 83 and 88. It has cutter-ish shape, with about four inches of vertical carry and three inches of glove side run at the slower end and six and seven inches, respectively, when thrown harder. It’s a 55 pitch on the 20-80 scale on pure movement stats, but hitters seem to see it well so it plays half a grade down.
The change up was previously his third pitch, but has been a clear point of developmental emphasis this summer. He throws it about 30% of the time now, up from the single digits last year. It averages 87mph, but can sometimes get a bit firm at 89 or drop down as slow as 84. It’s more of a deception pitch than the big screw-bally mover that has been hot lately, with about 4.5 inches of vertical carry (so 13 less than the fastball) and eight inches of run. He sells it well, and to me the deception and feel to locate it make it likely to play as average.
His delivery features a good stride down the mound and a high three quarters arm slot that both produces a downward angle on his pitches and gets him a ways down the mound, adding half a tick of perceived velocity to his stuff. That suits his fastball heavy, vertical movement oriented arsenal well. He’s a good athlete, repeating the delivery pretty well, and seems to have solid average command and an aggressive mentality that results in a ton of strikes and few free passes.
One big question for Rojas is going to be durability. A shoulder injury cost him the first couple months of last season, and an abdominal strain late in training camp put him on the shelf through April and May of this year. He seems to have no problem working into the sixth inning when he does pitch, and including the fall league managed around 80 innings in each of the last two minor league seasons. At this point I’m not yet worried that he’s chronically injury prone or anything, but he needs reps and now that he’s in the high minors needs to start prepping his body to try to survive a 162 game season soon.
We had Rojas as our #9 prospect during the offseason, and that’s about where he fit on other public lists too. He’s an interesting guy to rank at this point in his career. His numbers are video-game level and have been for a while (his 2.98 FIP last year was in the 95th percentile among all MiLB pitchers, and he’s trimmed a full 1.2 points off it this season to enter the overall top 10). With just three pitches, only one of which is clearly plus, he doesn’t have the arsenal to profile as a top prospect, though. Repeated injuries also cloud his future, although they’re largely not the particularly scary kind. The profile says high probability #4/5 with a yellow flag for durability, which is a nice prospect but can’t compete with the sexier upside of the Yesavages, Kings, and even Tiedemann’s of the world to crack what’s now a halfway deep organizational top 5-7. The results suggest that the whole might be a little more than the sum of the parts, though, and at a certain point what is has to outweigh what might be. Hopefully a healthy and productive second half makes this a question we have to mull this winter.
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