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Alan Roden's fantasy baseball prospect outlook, analyzing his bust potential for dynasty leagues. Matt uses his suite of fundamentals-rooted evaluation tools.
2022 MLB Draft signee Alan Roden was not up for prophylactic 40-man-rostering ahead of any Rule 5 Draft until after the 2025 MLB season, but a strong spring catapulted him onto the Blue Jays' Opening Day roster as their starting right fielder. He was optioned to Triple-A on May 6th, after no longer getting consistent playing time, so it's a good time to check in and review his prospect outlook.
Dating back to his NCAA Division 1 (D1) days at Creighton University in Omaha, Roden has long turned in high-caliber plate appearances that were propped up somewhat more and more by non-batted-ball than batted-ball outcomes.
What facets of the lefthanded batter's offensive game should dynasty and other fantasy players focus on? Let's examine them and figure that out.
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Prospect Analysis: Alan Roden
Evolution of College Plate Profile
Roden enrolled at Creighton in the fall of 2018 but took a full redshirt for the spring 2019 season. He logged only five plate trips as a redshirt freshman in the pandemic-stopped 2020 D1 season before playing every game of a limited 2021 Creighton schedule as a right or left fielder.
The 2021 D1 spring line was led by Above Plus K Avoid and Batted Ball Profile Ratings. The latter was fueled by a mix of LD, IFFB Avoid, and Pull OFFB that impressively begat not quite double plus hits (AVG) and extra bases (ISO) on Batted Balls. 2021 summer wood bat play in the New England Collegiate Baseball League yielded very similar outcomes, albeit with not quite so much AVG and ISO production. He likely fielded inquiries from MLB clubs that summer but returned to Creighton for a fourth academic year and third season, in which he played a lot more first base than the outfield corners.
The 2022 D1 season saw BB+HBP top plus and K Avoid soar to the 100th percentile. But in contrast to 2021 D1, Roden only produced half plus AVG and average ISO because the batted ball profile was shorter on LD and Pull OFFB. Roden traveled to the Cape Cod Baseball League early that summer seeking to boost his draft stock. Further losses in LD and Pull OFFB undermined AVG and ISO production, which stole some thunder from what he had rated double plus at each of BB+HBP and K Avoid against some of the country's top collegiate pitchers.
In the third round of the 2022 MLB Draft, the Blue Jays selected the extreme strikeout avoider who walked and was hit by pitches often, with hopes of resurrecting the louder 2021 bat.
Evolution of Pro Plate Profile
Roden hit from a hunched-over crouch when I filmed him in the 2022 Florida State League... he's now very upright, but still open-stanced
The post-draft pro debut encompassed 137 plate trips spent all with the Low-A Florida State League affiliate in Dunedin. Roden very nearly replicated his outstanding BB+HBP and K Avoid Ratings from the recent summer wood bat league stint. Despite a formidable 87 LD/72 IFFB Avoid/84 Pull GB Avoid hit trio, he only managed a single-digit (six) AVG that matched his ISO Rating.
By the end of 2022 play, Roden was more surely a standout non-batted-baller but questions remained as to whether the pro bat would play loudly enough to be viable against MLB pitchers.
Such concerns were partially laid to rest when above-average hit trios in 2023's High-A and Double-A leagues yielded louder half to full plus AVG Ratings. Elsewhere, circa half plus OFFB and Pull OFFB Ratings produced an in-the-ballpark half minus ISO mark.
BB+HBP and, more so, K Avoid remained as stout as ever. Hints that the lefthanded batter may have vulnerabilities to lefthanded pitchers had emerged. Note that all Overalls from Summer 2022 onward are higher versus Oppo- than Same-Handed Pitchers.
While the 79 BB+HBP and 95 K Avoid Ratings earned across 2024 Double-A and Triple-A play remained excellent, each had gradually fallen a few points or more since the 2022 debut.
Two good 2024 hit trios leaned LD and IFFB, Avoid over Pull GB Avoid, and produced more AVG in Triple-A than earlier that year in Double-A. Roden became still better in 2023 at mostly pulling the OFFB that he hit (Pull OFFB >>> OFFB), which allowed for more (50) ISO generation relative to before. The lingering platoon vulnerabilities to Same-Handed Pitchers mainly were relegated to extremely low BB+HBP volumes against them at both 2024 stops.
At the start of spring camp, the Jays' field staff almost surely did not project Roden as an Opening Day starting outfielder. But he would earn that nod via a not overly surprising big BB+HBP and K Avoid duo and an impressive 99 LD Rating that fueled a 91 AVG Rating, if not also a larger portion of the 80 ISO that could not be explained by such low OFFB and Pull OFFB marks.
A larger MLB Spring Training gap between Oppo- and Same-Handed Pitchers outcomes and a low Same-Handed Pitchers K Avoid, then favored inserting the lefthanded batter into a regular season lineup against mostly righthanded starters, while he cut his MLB teeth.
Evolution of Pro Offensive Running
Roden was rated right at average as an offensive runner across both 2024 stops.
For the third time in three pro seasons, the As' Baserunner Rating topped the As' Batter Rating by a wider margin. Even with the most recent AAA stint being the lone one among five in which the As Batter mark was tops among the duo, a larger body of evidence exists to support that the 5-foot-11, 215-pounder runs the bases better than he gets up the first baseline.
Dynasty Fantasy Baseball Outlook
Roden has a long track record of greater success at avoiding strikeouts, drawing walks, and collecting hit-by-pitches relative to league batting peers. In being better at working deeper counts, taking one for the team, and putting the ball in play, Roden at the least projects as an MLB plate pest.
The batted ball profile and its future outcomes, including hits and extra bases, merit more attention when forecasting which MLB roles best fit him ahead. Today, Roden sports a semi-low-launch batted ball profile that is biased by design to produce hits rather than power.
Both as a collegian and since landing in Double-A, he has been relatively prone to hitting pull-third groundballs, and that is not so advisable for a lefthanded batter who tends to play somewhat slow getting up the first baseline. Instead, Roden gets hits by generating line drives, limiting easier-out infield popups, and driving the relatively fewer outfield flyballs he hits far more often to the pull-third of the playing field.
Beyond the boost to hit frequency, the pull-third bias to outfield flyballs enables more extra bases relative to what a typical circuit batter with the same overall outfield flyball frequency could produce.
If the launch and spray angle permutations within the batted balls populations were not to change very much ahead, we should project Roden to generate half plus hits and average extra bases per batted ball at his major league peak. But per his pro outcomes sorted by pitcher handedness to date, such an achievement in one season would probably come over about 450 plate trips biased much more toward righthanded pitchers than would be the case for an everyday lefthanded-only batter.
The ordinary-heighted, stocky-physiqued righthanded thrower sports a stronger arm with enough accuracy to have amassed assists from right field at an above-average clip with few errors charged. As the flycatching range relative to peers decreased with age, Roden would be expected to migrate from right to left field gradually. Limited reach and slugging power would tend to discourage first base play beyond spot starts or other emergency-driven in-game needs. The physique and arm advise catching, which he did once at Creighton in 2020, as a possible backup plan if the bat was later deemed not loud enough to merit full-time outfield play.
Dynasty fantasy players should see a platoon-leaning lefthanded batting corner outfielder who could eventually deliver plus walks and hit by pitches, one and a half plus strikeout avoidance, average to half plus hits on batted balls, half minus to average extra bases on batted balls, and around average offensive running value with perhaps a few ticks up when a baserunner during plate trips of other batters.
For now, put keener eyes on the production of line drives and conversion of them into hits, maintenance of a larger pull bias to outfield flyballs, and the extent to which earlier career plate outcomes versus lefthanded pitchers lag those versus righthanded pitchers. Is a somewhat-above-average-hit, pull-for-perhaps-average-power, platoon-leaning lefthanded batter the likeliest outcome?
Brief Explanation of the FaBIO Model
My Fielding- and Ballpark-Independent Outcomes (FaBIO) evaluation model sorts every plate appearance into one of 12 outcome bins (BB+HBP, K, IFFB, Pull-Third OFFB, Center-Third OFFB, Oppo-Third OFFB, Pull-Third LD, Center-Third LD, Oppo-Third LD, Pull-Third GB, Center-Third GB, Oppo-Third GB) and charges the pitcher and batter with their league's mean runs value for said particular event that season.
Dividing a batter's total number of expected runs by plate appearance (PA) yields expected runs per PA that can be percentile ranked relative to the league mean and standard deviation for that parameter amongst league batter qualifiers to arrive at their Overall Rating.
Its three subcomponents of BB+HBP Rating (based on BB+HBP per PA), Strikeout Avoid Rating (K Avoid, based on K per PA), and Batted Ball Profile Rating (expected runs per batted ball) are also reported to identify the path the batter traveled to reach their Overall Rating.
Overall Rating and Batted Ball Profile Rating of batters should be considered power- and speed-neutralized metrics since the real-world runs value of a single batter's typical OFFB or LD varies with their strength, and the expected runs value of their typical GB varies with their speed.
To better understand the Path to Batted Ball Profile, we will also examine percentile ratings for select batted ball event types (on a per-batted ball basis). To check how well expected batted ball outcomes match real-world ones, we will compute percentile ratings for hits (AVG) and isolated power (ISO, or simply extra bases) on batted balls (recognizing full well that these two parameters are neither fielding- nor ballpark-independent outcomes).
What most explains a batter's ability to generate hits (AVG) on batted balls is any LD, IFFB avoidance, Pull-Third OFFB, and Pull-Third GB avoidance. What most explains their ability to generate extra bases (ISO) on batted balls is any OFFB, Pull-Third OFFB, Pull-Third LD, and IFFB avoidance.
A percentile rating of 97 amounts to plus-plus (two standard deviations above the mean), 84 is plus (one standard deviation above the mean), 69 is half plus, 50 is average, 31 is half minus, 16 is minus, and three is minus-minus.
A new addition to this suite of evaluation models is the Offensive Running Rating. This tool quantifies how each relevant inning's run expectancy was impacted by the player's action or inaction as either a batter or baserunner on specific types of plays that are more likely to involve one or both of their speed, offensive running technique, and acumen.
The evaluated batter and baserunner events are summarized in the graphic.
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