Despite the fact that Hyeseong Kim pulled off a historic feat during the Dodgers’ 18-2 rout of the Yankees on Saturday, Dave Roberts inexplicably benched him for the finale, instead playing Miguel Rojas at shortstop in Mookie Betts’ absence and batting him ninth.
Rojas went 0-2 during the 7-3 loss.
His second at-bat ended with a lineout to center field for the last out of the inning, which left runners on the corners.
Shohei Ohtani was on deck. Rojas has a .244 OBP. Kim has a .449 OBP. What are we doing here?
Although Kim was getting regular playing time while Tommy Edman was on the IL, he was pushed to a bench role after Edman’s return and is still playing second fiddle to Rojas, even though Kim can do all of the same things defensively and has been better offensively.
For some reason, the Dodgers still seem unconvinced by Kim and are falling back into old habits — giving veterans more playing time even when they’re not contributing to the team in any tangible way.
The solution to this seems pretty simple: give Rojas the Austin Barnes and Chris Taylor treatment to give Kim more playing time.
But even if they didn’t want to go that far, all it would take is a subtle shift in priorities. Kim first, then Rojas.
Miguel Rojas is getting in the way of Hyeseong Kim’s playing time with the Dodgers
Kim, who’s mostly been batting in the Dodgers’ nine spot, has scored 13 runs in 22 games so far, five of them by RBI for Shohei Ohtani, two for Freddie Freeman, and two for Mookie Betts.
Rojas has scored six runs, is batting .216 with a .237 OBP batting ninth, and is batting .163 with a .182 OBP and seven strikeouts with runners on base.
Ohtani’s numbers were incredibly lopsided toward the beginning of the season — a lot of home runs, not that many RBI — and it was for exactly this reason; the bottom of the Dodgers’ lineup wasn’t getting on base to give Ohtani RBI opportunities.
Even still, over a third of his MLB-leading 63 runs scored are on homers. But in just 22 games, Kim already represents over 12% of Ohtani’s other RBI; in 36 games, Ohtani’s only scored Rojas once.
The Dodgers sort of seemed to get wise to this when it was time for Rojas’ third at-bat on Sunday, and they swapped him out with Kim who, to be fair, did go down swinging for the first out in the bottom of the eighth.
Still, the Dodgers provably have a better chance of scoring runs when Kim’s in the lineup than when Rojas is, so something’s gotta give.
