Victor Roache, who entered the 2012 season as one of the top power hitting prospects in the 2012 draft, broke his left wrist last night in an injury that could put him out for the season. Georgia Southern took on Radford in a double header yesterday, and the injury for Roache took place in game two.
The outfielder went 3-for-4 in the first game, with a walk. He started off game two with a walk, his seventh of the 2012 season in 25 plate appearances. Roache went for a diving catch in game two, which is when the injury occurred. He rolled his wrist and was down on the ground for five minutes. Roache left the field after being fitted for an air cast, and later said on Twitter that he could miss the rest of the season.
It is unknown what the injury would do to his draft value. Roache was a top ten prospect according to MLB.com and Baseball America. Keith Law had him rated 45th overall. His value was primarily based on his hitting, since he doesn’t bring much to the field defensively. Even with hitting driving his value, he was good enough to be a top draft prospect.
Last year Roache hit for a .326/.438/.778 line in 230 at-bats, and led division I baseball with 30 home runs. He started the 2012 season in the same fashion. Prior to his injury, Roache hit for a .412/.600/.765 line in 17 at-bats, with two home runs. Perhaps the most impressive thing was his 28% walk rate, compared to his 6% strikeout rate.
If Roache is out for the year, he’s probably going to have to submit medical information to teams in order to regain some value on draft day. For the Pirates he looked like a strong candidate for the eighth overall pick. Now he looks like he could be a reach at eighth overall, since he will be out for the season and has a wrist injury with unknown long term effects. Teams could still gamble on his power, but the downside to this injury is that Roache’s value is fully based on his offense. If the injury impacts that offense in any way, it lowers his value a greater deal.
Tim started Pirates Prospects in 2009 from his home in Virginia, which was 40 minutes from where Pedro Alvarez made his pro debut in Lynchburg. That year, the Lynchburg Hillcats won the Carolina League championship, and Pirates Prospects was born from Tim's reporting along the way. The site has grown over the years to include many more writers, and Tim has gone on to become a credentialed MLB reporter, producing Pirates Prospects each year, and will publish his 11th Prospect Guide this offseason. He has also served as the Pittsburgh Pirates correspondent for Baseball America since 2019. Behind the scenes, Tim is an avid music lover, and most of the money he gets paid to run this site goes to vinyl records.
I was reading an article about Karsten Whitson, who turned down 2.1mil from the Padres in 2010 to attend Florida and he said he didn’t regret the decision. He had a great freshman year but his first start this season wasn’t pretty and then word comes down today that he left his start after 13 pitches with reports of very poor velocity. A kid like Roache, who is a great kid by the way, may have seen a 2+mil payday in his future this June but with this injury he just very well may be available in the comp round and unless the Pirates see something terribly wrong in his medical report, I would hope they picked him then. He may only get half what he thought but an injury like this might just make him realize a 1mil payday isn’t worth passing up, especially returning as a senior with no negotiating leverage. I wish him the best of luck recovering from his injury and would still love to see him in a State College Spikes uniform this summer
Looks like he’d be a wonderful pick with the Supp. draft pick we got. The bucs could get another 1st round talent, but with the new CBA the injury could help