Why the Brewers Let In-Demand Outfield Prospect Carlos D. Rodriguez Go for Nothing

When Carlos Rodriguez finished the 2024 season in the minor leagues and off the 40-man roster, he stood on the doorstep of free agency. This was his seventh professional campaign, so the Brewers had to add him to the 40-man roster right after the World Series, or allow him to leave and seek other opportunities as a free agent. They didn't want to use that spot that way, and thus, Rodriguez left the organization.

His free agency didn't last long, though. Atlanta signed him to a non-guaranteed deal that will not be lucrative in the short term, but which gives him a place on the 40-man roster. They had to give him that privilege in order to win the miniature bidding war that developed, because according to one report, over half the league inquired about the youngster's services.

Any time you see a reporter mention the agent or agency representing a player in a note like this, you can be quite sure that that agent or agency is the source of the information, and we all know why those parties might (if not fabricate) embellish the degree of demand for their client or the options they provided them. Still, Ghiroli is not a credulous passer-along of nonsense, so we can boil this down and say with some confidence that Rodriguez was (as minor-league free agents go) a hot commodity. No one believes he's a star, but he's plainly viewed as a player with big-league value. This is similar to the way the Brewers had to give Blake Perkins a big-league deal to snare him as a minor-league free agent two winters ago. Does that mean they erred by not protecting Rodriguez?

In short: No. While there are certainly teams with worse roster crunches right now, 40-man space is a scarce commodity for the team right now, and spending some of it (even briefly) on Rodriguez wouldn't have been the right use thereof. Here's why. This is a report of key hitting metrics Rodriguez put up in 128 plate appearances with Triple-A Nashville this season.

Captured here are both the reasons why a team would want Rodriguez, and the reasons why they wouldn't. He makes very good swing decisions: that chase rate is well below the average figure, and the difference between his in-zone and out-of-zone swing rate is quite high. He doesn't swing and miss much at all, especially within the zone. That's the good news. Everyone likes players with plus contact and plus plate discipline from the left side of the plate.

The bad news is everything else. Rodriguez's quality of contact, in terms of launch angles and exit speed, is lousy. There's genuine cause for concern that big-league pitching will knock the bat out of his hands, based on these data. He gives himself almost no chance to hit for power, based on his approach, and even running a high BABIP is tough when you just don't hit the ball hard with any regularity.

Now, Rodriguez has two home runs and nine total extra-base hits in 119 plate appearances down in the Venezuelan Winter League, so it's possible he's made a swing change geared toward doing more damage. He only had five extra-base hits during his time in Triple A, and just 25 in 500 total plate appearances Stateside this season. Having this little power is often disqualifying, when it comes to having a big-league future. There were 902 batters who had 100 or more plate appearances at Triple A and/or in the majors this year, and only 10 had a lower 90th-percentile exit velocity than Rodriguez's. Needless to say, there are no stars in that group.

We saw that he's had a bit more pop in Venezuela this fall, but that's in different parks, against uneven levels of competition. He's also been almost exclusively a center fielder there, and most scouts agree that he can play a capable center field in the big leagues. He's only set to turn 24 years old next month, too. Maybe he'll grow into a bit more power, even if it be just enough to make him playable. Maybe he'll turn into a plus defender at an up-the-middle position. Pair those factors with his demonstrated abilities as a contact hitter with on-base skills, and you can easily see his MLB utility.

With the Brewers, though, he was rarely playing center field even in the minors. They don't need more left-handed bats in their outfield mix. They don't need more good defenders. Rodriguez was wildly unlikely to slide past any of several lefty bats who play solid defense in center on the team's big-league depth chart, and Luis Lara is a reasonable facsimile of him, anyway, not far behind on the developmental ladder. It's not a good idea to carelessly let players with even a modicum of trade value slough off the roster for free, but the Brewers recognized this as a simple case: Rodriguez is a fine player with real but very limited value as a player or commodity for them. The transaction costs they would have paid in adding him to the roster and then either trading him or dealing away one or more of the outfielders ahead of him would have wiped out whatever value they protected by putting him on the roster in the first place.

If you're a really, really good organization who consistently develops homegrown talent, eventually, you leak talent. That has always been true, and it's especially unavoidable in the modern game, when there's such a surfeit of talent worldwide. Sometimes, trying to prevent that small loss of marginal value actually costs more than it earns. Rodriguez will go on to play in the big leagues, and he might even become a valuable role player in Atlanta for a while. Nonetheless, the Brewers were right not to spend their limited time, energy, or roster space trying to squeeze the last drop of excess value from him.