Raining on Alan Roden’s First Hit

It’s hard to imagine that there’s a Blue Jays fan anywhere who’s not rooting for Alen Roden to succeed this spring. After batting an absurd .407 during spring training, the 25-year-old outfield wasted no time notching the first hit of his major league career. In the sixth inning of the Opening Day blowout at the hands of the Orioles, Roden turned around a sinker from Zack Eflin, directing a seeing-eye chopper past a diving Jordan Westburg and into center field. Behold it in all its glory.

The camera cut to Roden’s family, who had flown in from Wisconsin to witness his debut. The broadcast even followed the ball to the MLB authenticator to bear witness to the ritual affixing of the sticker. It now sits proudly in Roden’s locker. Regardless of the fanfare, you might have noticed Roden didn’t exactly clobber the ball. His seeing-eye single was a far cry from the double Daulton Varsho ripped down the right field line for his first career base hit. It definitely doesn’t compare to Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bo Bichette, Alejandro Kirk, and Ernie Clement, all four of whom ripped hard-hit balls for their first career hits.

By contrast, Roden’s first hit took a solid three-Mississippi count to make it through the infield. Eflin’s pitch came in at 90.9 mph, and Roden softened it to 88.3 mph. However, 88.3 mph isn’t necessarily a softly hit ball. It’s more that Eflin’s sinker did exactly what it was supposed to do: make Roden pound the ball into the ground rather than the air. The fact that it slithered through the infield wasn’t a surprise because of the exit velocity. It was a surprise because the ball had a launch angle of -19 degrees and a distance of, wait for it, six feet. It wasn’t even the softest first hit on the team. So far as I can tell, that honor belongs to Davis Schneider, who plopped this 65.5-mph two-hopper at the second base spot and received an absolute gift from Julio Urias.

Regardless, I was curious about just how lucky Roden got here. According to Statcast, Roden's single had an expected batting average of just .094. That sounds pretty lucky! Even more fun was what the play did to Jordan Westburg’s defensive numbers. Over eight innings, Westburg saw the ball five times: he served as the pivot man on two double plays, fielded one routine grounder and one routine popup, and, of course, just missed Roden’s seeing-eye single. That’s one putout and two assists with a nice round fielding percentage of 1.000. But the advanced defensive metrics see all and they have no mercy. For his lack of range, Defensive Runs Saved docked Westburg a run, meaning that after one game, he was tied with 25 other players as the third-worst defender in baseball. That’s right, even though he made four other solid plays, missing Roden’s chopper made Westburg one of just 27 players (out of the 400 who got into a game on Opening Day) to lose a whole run according to DRS.

Not content with that information, I reached out to Craig Goldstein, editor-in-chief of Baseball Prospectus. BP’s defensive numbers weren’t posted yet on Friday, because why would they be? No one would be ridiculous enough to read anything into those numbers after one single day. Defensive stats can sometimes take years to stabilize. But I couldn’t help myself. I asked Craig if he could pull them anyway, because sometimes you’ve just got to know. BP's numbers also docked Westburg for failing to snag Roden's first hit: they expected him to field three balls, but since he only fielded, his attempt range sat at -1.

So congratulations to Alan Roden on his first hit, and on his second hit, which he notched yesterday. They are truly special accomplishments for any player and no one can take them away from him. But, uh, we can still make fun of them just a little.