Question his bat, but his defense is elite. Johan Rojas breaks down his five favorite catches.

CLEARWATER, Fla. — Johan Rojas figures batting practice is the most important part of his day.

Just not for the reason you would think.

If Rojas is going to be the Phillies’ opening-day center fielder, he will have to demonstrate he isn’t overmatched by major-league pitching. So, as exhibition games get underway, all eyes will be focused on the 23-year-old’s Grapefruit League at-bats.

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But whatever Rojas looks like at the plate, his signature will always be his defense, which is best summed up with one word: Elite.

Rojas’ reputation preceded him to the majors last summer, and then, somehow, he was even better than advertised. And he sets the foundation for his center-field wizardry in batting practice with a routine that he calls “power shagging.”

Unlike most outfielders, who drift after fly balls, Rojas tracks them aggressively and with purpose. He works on jumps and route-running, and notes how the ball is traveling on that particular day.

“BP shagging is my favorite time to work,” Rojas said. “That’s the best. It’s the most realistic to what you’re going to see in the game.”

Said fellow Phillies outfielder Brandon Marsh: “The dude knows how to anticipate better than most. It’s incredible the way he shags BP. He’s already moving before the ball is put in the left-center gap. He works hard at his craft out there.”

After the Phillies called him up from double A last July, Rojas recorded nine outs above average, tied for seventh among all outfielders despite playing only 59 regular-season games. His catalog of eye-popping catches is larger than the Baseball Encyclopedia.

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Rojas agreed to break down five of them for The Inquirer. For 30 minutes this week, he sat at his locker, watched video clips, and with help from outfield coach Paco Figueroa, explained how the heck he caught the ball.

Oh, and when he was through, he revealed his favorite. (Spoiler: You probably haven’t seen it.)

Two batters into his major-league debut, Rojas leaped against the out-of-town scoreboard and hauled in Tatis’ 393-foot drive to right-center field.

Oh, but it got even better.

Rojas secured the catch, turned, and uncorked a throw — on the fly — to first base to double off Ha-Seong Kim.

As Nick Castellanos said, “Welcome to the Show, kid.”

OK, first the catch: “I was ready,” Rojas said. “Honestly, every pitch, I think the ball is coming to me. I knew it was going to be deep, it was going to be on the wall. To play this game, to be the best defender, you’ve got to play fearless.”

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Sure, but Rojas also hadn’t played in Citizens Bank Park before.

“When I go to a [new] park, I go out there and walk around,” said Rojas, who takes note of things such as where a wall is padded. “I go to the warning track. I feel the wall. I go to the corners. It’s very important.”

And the throw?

“Nick told me, ‘First! First! First!” Rojas said. “That’s when I looked and I saw the runner was kind of around second base, and I just threw it.”

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Rojas watched the play again.

“Loco,” he said. “Crazy.”

Said Figueroa: “For me, it was almost like a cool story that’s going to jumpstart who he’s going to be, you know? It was really special.”

The skill that separates Rojas from most outfielders is the precision of his routes. When he runs to a spot where he expects the ball to arrive, he’s usually correct.

“I track a ball, and I already have an idea of where the ball’s going to land,” Rojas said, watching Call’s 401-foot blast to left-center in the ninth inning of an 8-4 victory in the opener of a doubleheader against the Nationals. “That’s the biggest thing.”

Sometimes, though, there’s a wall in the way. In this case, the wall was multilayered, with a cement ledge separating the State Farm slogan with the logo and adding to the catch’s degree of difficulty.

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“It’s a fine line of when to commit yourself to jumping at it,” Figueroa said. “You can’t reach the cement, so you might have to retreat back and get the ricochet.”

“Yeah,” Rojas said, “but in my mind, any ball in the air, I’m going to go and get it.”

Rojas chalks up that skill to years of power shagging, an exercise that he adopted after the Phillies signed him out of the Dominican Republic for $10,000, a pittance compared to the multimillions conferred upon the highest-profile international prospects.

“When I met [minor league outfield coordinator Andy] Abad and Paco, that’s their staple,” Rojas said. “Their staple is power shagging.”

OK, so maybe Rojas made this catch harder than it had to be.

With a runner on first base, nobody out, and the Phillies trailing by two runs in the fourth inning, he was playing deep to prevent Toronto’s Santiago Espinal from hitting a ball over his head. And as radio play-by-play announcer Scott Franzke noted on the air, Rojas initially broke back on Espinal’s shallow pop-up.

Looking back, Rojas chuckled.

“I’m laughing because that ball can’t drop,” he said. “I’ve got to catch it.”

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Especially because second baseman Bryson Stott lost sight of it. But even if Stott continued to backpedal into shallow center field, Rojas wasn’t going to be called off, which is why we included this catch on our list.

Some young center fielders are reluctant to take charge. Not Rojas. He expects to catch anything in his direction. When Rojas got called up, Figueroa had simple directions for the other defenders: “He’s the captain.”

“It’s my ball,” he said. “I know that the infielders know that I like to go after the ball, and I know that, if I call it, I have the priority. Always when I think I have a chance to catch the ball I’m going to call it.”

If it isn’t Rojas’ most replayed catch, it was his most important one.

Bases loaded. Two outs. Phillies leading by two runs in the eighth inning of Game 4 of the divisional series against the Braves. Acuña at the plate.

The stakes couldn’t have been higher.

“If the ball drops,” Rojas said, “everybody scores.”

Acuña hit the ball well — 97.5 mph off the bat, according to Statcast — but the bigger challenge was where he hit it. Rojas was shaded the opposite way toward right field, and Acuña drove Craig Kimbrel’s 96 mph fastball to left-center, where the wall juts in at an angle.

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“I took my eyes off [the ball] because I want to check where the wall was,” Rojas said. “You need to pick what side [of the angle] to go to. Because the ball can be up against the wall, or you might not have to jump and keep running and catch it here [on the center-field side].”

Rojas said it was the first time he encountered a ball in that spot in a game. He jumped even though he had more room on the warning track, then hit the wall on the left-field side of the angle.

“I just said to myself, ‘If that ball’s here in the stadium, I want to catch that ball,’” Rojas said.

Here’s something you don’t often hear from Rojas: “When I was going for that ball, honestly, I didn’t think I had a chance.”

Neither did Statcast, which gave this an 87% chance of being a hit.

But Rojas dove for Pham’s low line drive anyway, a decision that he concedes was easier because of the situation. The Phillies were trailing 5-1 in the eighth inning of Game 6 of the NL Championship Series. If it was a closer game, he might’ve been more conservative to be sure the ball stayed in front of him.

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Maybe not, though. Figueroa cited Rojas’ supreme confidence in his glove hand as a reason he believes he can dive for a ball and still knock it down if he doesn’t come up with the catch.

“A lot of guys see that play and just pull up,” Figueroa said. “But with that confidence and his ability to want the ball always, he was able to make that play.”

Said Rojas: “In my mind, I’m like, ‘Wow, crazy. I didn’t have a chance and I caught that ball.’”

So, which of these is Rojas’ favorite?

None?

“I robbed just one homer, I think,” he said, “and it was in the minor leagues last year in double A.”

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Rojas recalls running down Red Sox top prospect Marcelo Mayer’s drive to right-center at Portland’s Hadlock Field, leaping at the wall, and coming down with the ball.

But here’s what Rojas remembers most: “I robbed the homer and next AB, he hit a homer to the same spot … but big. He told me, ‘Try to get that one!’ It was really funny. It was a bomb.”

It must’ve been if Rojas couldn’t catch it.