Blue Jays’ Roemon Fields deserving of opportunity in crowded outfield

The Toronto Blue Jays have a stockpile of young talented outfielders at both major league level and their Triple-A affiliate in Buffalo, however, one of the less talked about is the speedster Roemon Fields who has legitimately earned an eventual opportunity with the big club.

With all the outfield talk surrounding prospect Teoscar Hernandez and Anthony Alford this spring, Roemon Fields quietly put together one of the better Grapefruit League performances of any Blue Jays player.

The speedy 27-year old is currently slashing .364/.432/.576 with 12 hits and two stolen bases in 37 plate appearances. Fields has two doubles, a triple and a home run on his 2018 spring training resume thus far. In saying that Hernandez has also had an equally impressive spring hitting .341 and leading the team with 11 runs batted in along with three round-trippers.

His impressive spring performance comes after the outfielder hit .283 with 50 stolen bases in 119 games between Buffalo (103 games) and New Hampshire (16 games) last season. In all of his four seasons in the minors, Fields has at least 40 stolen bases in each of them. The guy can flat out fly and it would be interesting to see how that speed could translate for the Jays at the MLB level.

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Fields should at least be mentioned in the same conversation as the likes of Hernandez and Alford while climbing ahead of both Dalton Pompey and Dwight Smith Jr. on the Jays outfield depth chart.

Fields had seven multi-stolen base games last season including a trifecta of thefts versus the Pawtucket Red Sox. The lefty could improve his success rate versus southpaws as Fields batted just .233 versus lefties compared to a much improved .300 clip against right-handers in 2017.

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If the injury bug strikes the Jays outfield this season, you can probably bet on Fields making his MLB debut at some point during the summer. If he can prove he can consistently get on base with the stick, the Jays may have no choice but to keep him around due to his propensity to steal bases in their traditionally slow afoot lineups.