Alan Roden Has Taken a Surprisingly Rare Route to the Show

Alan Roden hit his first career home run this week and has been a bright spot in the Jays lineup so far. He has a chance to walk a path that few other Jays players have before.

Last month, Alan Roden was added to FanGraphs' list of the top 100 prospects. Simon Li wrote about it and noted that the Jays “haven't drafted and developed a solid starting outfielder in a long while.” That got me thinking about it, so I went back and looked at the players who have made up the Blue Jays outfielders the last few seasons. First off, for a player to be considered here they had to play at least a third of the games in a season in the outfield. In a typical 162-game year, that’s a threshold of 54 games (I adjusted appropriately for shortened seasons). In the last six seasons, only the recently demoted Davis Schneider and his 93 outfield starts in 2024 qualify. Going back to 2011, the only other name that gets added to the list is Kevin Pillar. Not happy with that, I took it all the way back to 1977!

In the history of the Toronto Blue Jays 68 players have taken a spot in the outfield for at least a third of the games.

In the early days of the franchise, the Jays relied on the expansion draft and purchasing contracts to fill their roster. In 1980, Toronto saw the debut of their first drafted outfielder: Lloyd Moseby, who had been taken in the first round of the 1978 draft, would play 104 games. Jesse Barfield, who was drafted a year earlier, would join Moseby in 1982 and anchor the outfield with Rule 5 acquisition George Bell for the majority of the '80s. 

In the 49-year history of the franchise, Toronto has drafted 14 outfielders who were able to work their way through the minors and contribute at the major league level. Almost two-thirds of those players were drafted before Alan Roden was born! In fact, the top six by bWAR were all drafted before the turn of the millennium (Roden was born December 22, 1999). Without hyperbole, Roden has a real chance to move into the top 10 of this list before the 2025 season is over.

Interestingly, of those drafted players, nine were taken in the first three rounds of the draft, and six were first-rounders. Without a doubt, the best value the Jays have ever found in the draft is Jesse Barfield. Barfield's 28.8 bWAR not only tops the list, but he was taken in the ninth round! The deepest into a draft we’ve ever pulled a player who made this list is Kevin Pillar, who was selected in the 32nd round of the 2011 draft. The Jays selected four other outfielders ahead of him that year. None of them ever made the majors.

A couple of other fun tidbits to come out of this exercise. One is Fred Lewis, who played 99 games in the Jays outfield in 2010. On Baseball Refernce, Lewis is listed as being “sent” to the Jays as part of a conditional deal. Typically, these moves are phrased as “traded to the Jays…” and that’s how I classified it for the purposes of this article. I can’t find the other half of the deal - it was for a PTBNL or cash, but that either never happened, or I just haven't been able to find a record of it. Another is Candy Maldonado, who was acquired by Toronto in a trade and then also signed later as a free agent. Rather than count him twice, he went in the trade column.

To bring this back to Roden, it has absolutely been a long time since we’ve had a drafted player who made it as far as he has. Sure, it’s only 18 games into his Blue Jays career and the road could fork in many different directions, but we’re in the business of dreaming for the future.

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