Are the Dodgers interested in Eddie Rosario?

[konu]

According to Jon Becker of the MLB Daily Dish, the Dodgers are one of the teams interested in free-agent outfielder Eddie Rosario. Rosario, 29 from Puerto Rico has played with the Twins his whole major league career and over the last 4 years, he’s turned himself into quite the power hitter.  He’s slugged at a .490 clip which is really good. To me, if true this screams he’d be here to fill in Joc’s role. Joc has slugged at a .466 clip the last 4 years. Rosario has Ops’d at .807 the last 4 years and Joc was at .766. So Rosario has been the slightly better hitter.

 

Rosario is a pretty decent hitter but he’s left-handed and all off-season there’s been talk of getting right-handed bats. So is he really just filling the Joc role? Well, Rosario has primarily played in left field in the majors but he had 2,000 minor league innings at 2nd base. The Brewers who are seen as favorites at this moment want him to play first. So there’s obviously some positional versatility there with Rosario. He’s not a good fielder but he should be able to hold up decently wherever he plays. As I mentioned, Rosario is good enough with the bat, every year his strikeout rate has decreased which is a good sign means he’s putting the ball in play, in fact, he’s 90th percentile in his K rate which means he’s better than 90% of the league. However, the main issue of his and why his OPS isn’t higher is he struggles to get on base because he doesn’t take walks. His career walk percentage is 4.7% which is abysmal. For context, Joc’s walk rate is 12% which is pretty good. Seems like most of Rosario’s hits are for extra bases which isn’t a bad thing it’s just weird. 

 

Since Joc punished righties how does Rosario do? Well, Joc has an ops of .850 against righties in his career, that’s pretty good. Rosario has an ops of .818, so lower than Joc’s but good as well. Interestingly enough, Rosario has a higher slugging % against righties than Joc does .507 to .500. Rosario’s issue is again not being able to get on base to boost his ops. Rosario is also a much better hitter against lefties. His ops is .710, Joc’s in .575. Rosario turns into much more of a singles hitter against lefties but his career batting average against lefties is the same as against righties .277. He’s been pretty consistent with being able to find the sweet spot of his bat. 

 

What do the Dodgers get in Rosario? Well like I’ve detailed he’s mostly a doubles and home runs guy. He’s been good offensively but his one major issue is getting on base. He doesn’t whiff a ton either, better than 70% of the league. So he’s truly an interesting case. I don’t think the Dodgers need him cause they need right-handed bats to balance the lineup. But if they wanted someone to replace what Pederson does, they might be looking at an upgrade in that scenario. What do you guys think?