At night, he tiptoes onto golf courses to fish in the water hazards. During the day, at the Ballpark of the Palm Beaches in West Palm Beach, he’s learning how to play the field. Josh Rojas is being weaned to be a mini-Marwin, the heir apparent to the Astros’ recently departed (via free agency) Marwin Gonzalez, still unsigned at press time.

While Aledmys Diaz was obtained to help cover MarGo‘s half-dozen positions for 2019, Rojas, 24, is waiting his turn at this, his first Spring Training as a non-roster invitee with the Astros.

Joshua Luke Rojas

Born in Glendale, Arizona, Rojas grew up in the Grand Canyon State, attending Millennium High School in nearby Goodyear, just west of Phoenix. A two-sport star, he played baseball and carried the ball for the football team as a running back for the Tigers.

A left-handed batter, Rojas compiled a .382 average in his three varsity years at Millennium. Accumulating 330 plate appearances, he cobbled together 29 doubles, six triples, and 11 home runs, while knocking in 67 runs.

Chalking up nearly twice as many walks (48) as strikeouts (25), Rojas elevated his OBP to .485, contributing to an impressively bloated 1.144 OPS. Stealing 27 bases in 30 attempts helped him score 104 runs.

Rojas attended Paradise Valley Community College in Phoenix for two years, playing right field, as well as second and third base. He then moved to Honolulu, Hawaii and the University of Hawaii at Manoa, graduating with a degree in sociology.

In fact, from his time at Millennium through Hawaii, the right-handed thrower played in the outfield and every infield position but first base.

Fielding Strengths

As the 6’1″, 185-pound Rojas shared with What The Heck Bobby’s Jayne Hansen in July 2017, “I pride myself at getting to balls that other people might not get to. I think my reads off the bat [are] what I’m the best at because I’m not the fastest guy. I’m probably not the quickest guy.

“But I feel like my read off of the hitter’s swing, I feel like it’s really good. So I think that’s what allows me to play multiple positions as I can read the ball off the bat from different spots on the field because I’ve been all over the place.”

Rojas was one of the UH Rainbow Warriors’ top hitters in 2017 leading up to the June he was drafted. He hit .294 over 170 at-bats and tied for the team lead in home runs with five, and was first in triples (six) and on-base percentage (.404). He came in second on the team in doubles (15) and hits (50) and played in all but one of the team’s games in 2017, the only player to start in 50 of them.

“Kind of Unexpected”

Rojas was selected in the 26th round of the 2017 MLB Draft by Houston.

“I was definitely excited,” Rojas told the West Valley View News a couple weeks after the draft. “It was kind of unexpected. I didn’t get many calls before that; nobody seemed overly interested. On draft day, I was relaxed and not really paying attention to it. To get the call was pretty exciting.”

Rojas had just one workout before the draft. An Astro rep invited him to a pre-draft combine in Huntington Beach, California to showcase his skills.

“I went there and did the workout, but didn’t really hear anything after that,” Rojas said. “Then on draft day, I got the call from the Astros.”

Rojas traveled nearly 5,000 miles from Honolulu to Troy, NY to join his first pro team, Houston’s short season Class A Tri-City ValleyCats of the New York-Penn League. But, a delay in his paperwork precluded his participation in any games, and his pro debut actually came with the full season Class A Quad Cities River Bandits in late June 2017.

Three weeks later, he was Midwest League Player of the Week, on his way to a .256 average in 195 ABs. His extra-base hits were plentiful for the Bandits, as Rojas collected five doubles, five triples, and 10 home runs, adding to a .487 slugging percentage. Striking out nearly three times more than he walked (43-15) put contact rate on the Rojas front burner, however.

“I’ve always just been a free swinger and not really had an offensive approach,” Rojas admitted to Hansen. “So I think the biggest thing I could work on is my offensive approach, just being more consistent and swinging at better pitches.

“I think when I start doing better at the plate and start having more success, I start to be more of that free swinger again and start to lose my approach. So I think the biggest thing is I’ve got to stay focused on my approach and, in the end, it will make me a more consistent hitter.”

The Next Step

Rojas began his 2018 at Houston’s Advanced-A Buies Creek Astros in the Carolina League, before spending the last three-quarters of the season with the Double-A Corpus Christi Hooks.

Overall, last season brought him a combined .263 average in 556 plate appearances, as he walked 68 times and struck out 89 times, a much better ratio than the previous year. What’s more, he stole 38 bases in 52 attempts.

In his 106 games at Corpus Christi last year, Rojas started at least 10 games at five different positions. Nine other starts came at shortstop, the most recent arrow added to Rojas’ growing defensive quiver.

“One of the big things I want people to know that I bring to the table,” Rojas told the Houston Chronicle‘s Chandler Rome after checking in to camp, “is that I can fill in at any spot and be just as good as the guy in front of me.

“This should tell you something,” highly-touted pitching prospect JB Bukauskas chimed in, “When I got [to Corpus Christi in September], I thought he’d been playing shortstop the entire year, and apparently he hadn’t been.”

Indeed, reflecting his understanding of his role in the organization (and the vast talent within it), Rojas spent the offseason sharpening his familiarity with his two most unfamiliar positions: shortstop and center field. Center is the only position (besides pitcher and catcher) where Rojas has not started a minor league game.

“If I want my bat in the lineup, the best way to do that is to play multiple positions,” Rojas affirmed.

Spring Forward

“I’ve always been able to play every position,” he concluded. “I was talking to the other infielders here, and they said they like to move us all around and get us comfortable at every position, just so at the next level, you’re not at one spot stuck behind one person. That’s what I’m most excited about. I’ve done the whole moving around thing and I feel comfortable doing it.”

Eager to express his gratitude for who drafted him, Rojas gave this assessment of the Astros to the WVV News: “They’re well known for getting guys up from the Minor Leagues to the Major Leagues. I’ve been able to watch practices and watch workouts.

“The player development stuff going on is amazing. Everything they do is geared toward the Major League level. They’re not just focused on being successful here, that’s the main message. I’m super excited about being with the Astros.”

The many years Josh Rojas has already dedicated to being flexible on the diamond should make toting around all those gloves well worth the wait.