CLEVELAND — Nearly four years ago, A.J. Hinch sat Jake Rogers down and laid out a long list of all he needed to improve. The blocking, the framing, the setup, the target, the small nuances of the catcher position. It was Hinch’s first year as manager of the Detroit Tigers. He and Rogers had a prior relationship from their times in the Houston Astros organization. Now with the Tigers, Rogers’ career was at an early crossroads.
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He made his MLB debut in 2019 and struggled. He spent all of 2020 at the alternate site. Just when the possibility of the organization moving on seemed possible, a new manager was telling Rogers about the ways his biggest perceived strength — defense — wasn’t actually all that great.
“I pretty much agreed and was like, ‘All right, I get it,’” Rogers said.
Skip ahead to Monday. Rogers hit a line drive into shallow center field. Cleveland Guardians outfielder Angel Martinez dived for the ball and missed. Rogers whirled around the bases, picking up steam as he careened around third and chug-a-lugged toward home with his goofy catcher’s gait.
Rogers slid headfirst and narrowly avoided a tag. Safe by a millisecond.
“I told the trainers, ‘We need an oxygen mask,’” starting pitcher Tarik Skubal said. “He went down in the tunnel, had the fan on him. I was like, ‘Brother, you got to breathe.’”
The play was scored a triple, with an error on Martinez, who fell and struggled picking up the ball as it rolled into deep center. Rogers nonetheless celebrated with the Tigers’ home-run spear in the dugout.
“I got to appeal,” he said. “It’s a homer to me.”
Jake Rogers hits an inside-the-park homer and ends with a snow angel!! ❄️🏃#RepDetroit pic.twitter.com/074AKHZ4Qs
— Bally Sports Detroit (@BallySportsDET) July 22, 2024
Once on the edge of aging out or being replaced as the Tigers’ so-called catcher of the future, Rogers is now a steady, reliable, almost underrated presence. After switching to a one-knee setup before the 2023 season, he has blossomed into an excellent pitch framer, worth plus-five framing runs this season. His arm and athleticism pouncing on balls dribbled in front of the plate have always been calling cards. Once viewed as a player who might never hit, his power plays in the majors.
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The well-rounded production is part of Rogers’ charm. But it is nothing compared to the force of personality, this laid-back player who can serve as the perfect foil to the laser-focused pitchers he often catches. No better example than June 3 in Texas, when Rogers went out to talk to Skubal, one of the most intense competitors in the sport. Skubal had stopped play because he had something in his eye. Rogers playfully slapped him in the face.
“I gave him a little love tap there,” Rogers said that night, “and I told him that I was going to take every opportunity to slap Skube on live television.”
On July 12 against the Los Angeles Dodgers, when Skubal barked at home-plate umpire John Libka after a series of close calls, Rogers told Libka: “Just hang in there. We’ll get through it.”
For Rogers, there is indeed an art to managing the emotions of his pitchers in-game. In the age of the pitch clock, a jog out to the mound is often just a small chance to give his pitcher a breather. Sometimes there’s levity involved, too.
“Sometimes it’s just to clear air,” Rogers said. “What are we eating? I wonder what the spread is after the game.”
Those are the sort of instances that have made Rogers not only one of Detroit’s most important players but also an important part of the team’s heartbeat. The Tigers are 11-3 in their past 14 games, battling back from the brink of irrelevance to give their season a second life. It was Rogers who first declared, “Don’t let the Tigers get hot.”
The stories and the antics and the caricatured mustache he has often sported can sometimes obscure the beauty of his baseball story. Rogers made that 2019 debut, then seemed to fall out of favor in 2020. In 2021, he began the season in the minor leagues. He was promoted in May, and the Tigers instantly began to play better baseball.
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“When I came back up it was like a deep breath,” Rogers said. “OK, I’ve been here before. This is what I need to do. This is the type of player I am. This is where I need to be good every day and this is what I need to work on. I think it was just kind of me learning myself.”
Just as Rogers found his footing, his elbow swelled and his season ended. He had Tommy John surgery and missed a year and a half. He spent that ensuing season rehabbing in Lakeland, Fla., with Ryan Sienko, then a minor-league coordinator and now the Tigers’ major-league catching coach. There he switched to the one-knee setup, a needed change after Rogers had graded out at minus-4 framing runs over his first two stints in the majors.
“Obviously you see some crazy stuff with your numbers and how bad it was,” Rogers said. “I always thought I was a good receiver, and obviously the numbers weren’t translating.”
Rogers also honed in his swing and hit 21 homers in the majors last year. This season, he entered Monday worth 1.3 fWAR, third-most among Tigers’ position players. A long search for his baseball identity has finally led to a place of stability.
“Naturally a player can get too stubborn about his strengths and too obsessed about his weaknesses,” Hinch said. “I think Jake has done a good job of balancing both. He has been open-minded to changing part of his strengths. The receiving work he did behind the plate … is such an encouraging sign of someone who’s willing to evolve. And on the flip side of it, he has taken his offensive development very seriously, but is not obsessed about it to the point of being a detriment.”
In a broader sense, Rogers serves as a reminder of the elongated development timeline catchers often face. It is a difficult, all-consuming position. Rogers, a Canyon, Texas, product who attended college at Tulane, credited his time with the Green Wave for helping prepare him. Even then, it took extra seasoning in the minor leagues.
“I couldn’t imagine being an 18- or 19-year-old kid in the minor leagues, trying to catch these crazy arms and trying to learn how to game plan,” Rogers said. “If I was a 19-year-old catcher in Low A, I might not have made it to where I am today.”
After the near inside-the-park home run Monday, Rogers laid out at home plate as if frozen in a snow angel pose. His teammates cackled and the memes circulated social media.
Let's photoshop Jake Rogers. #tigers pic.twitter.com/hUc4B4QbgZ
— Father Yoda (@FatherYoda) July 22, 2024
That’s become the essence of Jake Rogers. Always entertaining. And not to be underestimated.
“The biggest thing from the early years into now is being able to realize who I am,” Rogers said, “and just being that person every day.”
(Photo: Jason Miller / Getty Images)
Cody Stavenhagen is a staff writer covering the Detroit Tigers and Major League Baseball for The Athletic. Previously, he covered Michigan football at The Athletic and Oklahoma football and basketball for the Tulsa World, where he was named APSE Beat Writer of the Year for his circulation group in 2016. He is a native of Amarillo, Texas. Follow Cody on Twitter @CodyStavenhagen
