Johan Rojas’ potential PED suspension leaves Phillies no choice but to act (again)

The news that is coming down the pipe wouldn’t be a huge deal for some teams.

The Phillies are not one of those teams.

Johan Rojas might be a third-string center fielder who forces you to play with an eight-man batting order, but he is a man without an obvious replacement right now. The Phillies are going to need to figure one out soon, assuming the formality of the 25-year-old’s pending appeal of an 80-game performance-enhancing drug suspension that an Inquirer source says he faces.

» READ MORE: Source: Phillies outfielder Johan Rojas faces 80-game suspension for failed drug test

Bryan De La Cruz? The 29-year-old nonroster invitee offers enough of a profile at the plate to suspend disbelief. But he hasn’t played center field in the big leagues since 2023, and even then he did it in only seven games.

Dylan Moore? He played a couple of innings in center field last season but has only 105 in a seven-year big league career as a utility man. The 32-year-old nonroster invitee would make some sense as the third option in any given game. But it’s a stretch to think he’d make sense as a long-term sub.

Or, there is Pedro León, a 28-year-old who went 2-for-20 with 10 strikeouts in 2024 for the Astros. Houston waived him in November.

There aren’t any other options on the spring training roster, unless you count Edmundo Sosa in an emergency situation.

There is a reason the Phillies traded for Harrison Bader last July. It’s the same reason they were open to re-signing him early in an offseason that ended with him settling for a two-year, $20.5 million contract with the Giants. The Phillies are thin on center fielders, and on right-handed hitters, and even thinner on guys with both skill sets.

It’s a shame the Bader situation played out as it did. The Phillies’ offseason would look a lot different if they’d been able to sign him to something like a two-year, $25 million extension before he exercised his end of a mutual opt-out. There would have been more than enough at-bats to go around between righties Bader and Adolis García and lefties Brandon Marsh and Justin Crawford, as well as a better combination of depth and platoon ability. And if Bader came at the price of García going elsewhere, no worries. You can get a right-handed-hitting corner outfielder easier than you can a right-handed-hitting center fielder, and a lot of them cost less than García’s $10 million, for the same amount of cross-your-fingers-and-pray.

» READ MORE: Kyle Schwarber is too good to bat cleanup. That, and other conclusions from last year’s lineups.

Alas, here we are. It would betray a misunderstanding of the inner workings of the business of baseball to interpret Bader’s eventual contract with the Giants as an unwillingness to match by the Phillies. They moved on and he moved on and nobody would be thinking twice if the Mets didn’t offer an outlandish contract to Bo Bichette. None of that matters now.

The Phillies don’t have a choice but to scour the earth for someone who at least looks like a center fielder when you squint. Marsh has never played in more than 135 games in a big league season, which is 135 more than Crawford has ever played. That’s not a comfortable situation. The only unsigned free agent of note is Manuel Margot, who would leave everyone pining for Rojas.

Keep in mind, Rojas appeared in 71 games last season. At the start of that season, the organization’s depth chart looked pretty much as it does now. If you’d forgotten Rojas got that much playing time, it’s because he didn’t offer a whole lot to remember him by.

His .569 OPS ranked among the bottom 10% of MLB hitters with at least 170 plate appearances. He is one of only three center fielders out of 46 total to have an OPS lower than .600 while garnering at least 500 plate appearances over the last two seasons. His average exit velocity ranks second to last.

That would lead to an obvious question, if we hadn’t already covered the answer. Why did Rojas get so many at-bats? Because the Phillies didn’t have any better options. Sure, some wishful thinking factored in, as did an overemphasis on center field defense. The math is a little more complicated than subtracting the surplus doubles a better defender robs from the surplus doubles a better hitter would have given you at the plate. But the fundamental logic holds, and Rojas failed it. Reality is, the Phillies were a better team last season with Rojas on the bench and Marsh in center field, even against lefties.

You can argue that they are no worse off for losing Rojas. It might be true, to a certain extent. Moore and De La Cruz could be as good as it gets unless someone shakes loose on cut-down day (local product Chas McCormick is in camp with the Cubs on a minor-league contract). If finding a center fielder was easy, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.