Philadelphia Phillies' Struggling Youngster Taking Too Much Criticism

It hasn't been a great start for one of the Philadelphia Phillies' players this season, but he's still taking too much criticism.

Coming into this season, there was going to be a lot of eyeballs on Philadelphia Phillies center fielder Johan Rojas' performance at the plate following his disastrous playoff showing.

His 4-43 stat line ensured that.

This was followed by the eyebrow raising comments made by Dave Dombrowski that they might start the youngster in Triple-A if he didn't show signs of improvement at the plate in spring.

Ultimately, they felt comfortable enough to have Rojas make the Opening Day roster, despite him not necessarily easing worries about his offense during Spring Training.

Those issues have carried over into the early portion of the season as he's only gotten five hits across his 31 at-bats. This has prompted many people to say that the Phillies should demote Rojas to the minors and allow him to develop his offense.

Overall, this sentiment is surprising.

Have people already forgotten what state the outfield defense was in before Rojas was called up? And how good he was at manning center field? And that he had a batting average of .302 and an OPS+ of 109 across 59 games?

It seems that way.

Sure, Rojas has not performed well at the plate, and he's easily been the worst hitter on the team, but he is getting way too much criticism for Philadelphia's lack of offense through their first 12 games.

Only three of the Phillies' regular starters have an OPS+ above the league-average level of 100. Trea Turner, Alec Bohm, Kyle Schwarber, Bryson Stott, and Nick Castellanos are all below-average so far.

Rojas has also struck out the fewest times on the team.

Brandon Marsh, J.T. Realmuto, Schwarber, Turner, and Castellanos all have double, or more than double, the six K's that Rojas does.

And based on Baseball Savant's advanced analytics, Rojas' expected batting average (.180) and expected slugging percentage (.207) are higher than what his actual numbers have been, meaning he's been fairly unlucky so far and there is positive regression coming.

This isn't too say that Rojas has been a good hitter, or is a good hitter.

This just points out that the youngster, who everyone knew was still learning how to hit at the Major League level, isn't the sole reason why this offense has been poor.

Castellanos, Turner, and Schwarber are big money guys who need to step their game up. Stott is putting together a slow start as well.

There's multiple reasons why Philadelphia have only won six out of their 12 games.

Rojas isn't the sole one.