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Tyler Rogers, playing for the New York Mets in September of this year, throws during a game against the Cincinnati Reds.Jeff Dean/The Associated Press
At 6 foot 5 and 187 pounds, Tyler Rogers is built like a whippet. When the submariner whips a ball toward home plate, the knuckles on his right hand nearly scrape against the dirt.
Pitches rise and fall and spin away from confused batters like frisbees. At least once he has struck out a fellow and hit him at the same time. Not while playing whiffle ball in the back yard, but during a big-league game.
The Blue Jays’ newest reliever led the major leagues in appearances for the fourth time in 2025 with 81 for the San Francisco Giants and the New York Mets. Between them he threw 77.1 innings, allowed just four home runs and had a 1.98 earned run average.
This week, the 35-year-old signed a three-year, US$37-million contract with Toronto, the first team to reach out to him in November when the free-agency period began.
That made an impression on him, as did a video meeting soon after with Blue Jays manager John Schneider and general manager Ross Atkins. Rogers went from high school to junior college and then to Austin Peay State College, a mid-major NCAA Div. 1 school in Tennessee.
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“I’d never been recruited before so that felt good in a sense,” Rogers said during a Zoom call on Friday with Toronto broadcasters and journalists. “The Blue Jays seemed pretty aggressive, more aggressive than anybody else.”
He has a career ERA of 2.76 in 420 big-league games, all in relief. He has an identical twin brother, Taylor, who is also a relief specialist and has pitched in 566 games. Taylor doesn’t throw from down under but is just as accomplished, twice registering 30 saves or more.
“He means a lot to me,” Tyler said of his twin, who was born 30 seconds before him. “He has kind of always been a year ahead of me even though we are twins. He sort of laid a blueprint for me and showed me it’s possible. [I thought] if he could do it, I could do it.”
He began throwing a submarine ball in his first year of junior college with the Garden City (Kansas) Broncbusters.
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Rogers was impressed by the Blue Jays in his free agency meetings with them and he was captivated by the team’s run to Game 7 of the World Series.Lynne Sladky/The Associated Press
“The way it looks today, it didn’t look like that then,” he explained. “My delivery has gradually gone down further and further. I wouldn’t say it is a finished product by any means because it never is going to be.”
He tried throwing nearly underhand at the suggestion of his junior college coach.
“To this day, I don’t know why I am so receptive to it and why I went all in but I do think if you are going to make the change you have to fully commit,” Rogers said. “It is not something where you can kind of dip your toe in.”
He watched on television as the Blue Jays made their run through the playoffs. After winning the American League East Division, they made it all the way to the World Series where they fell in seven games to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
“I watched the World Series like everybody else, but I think the biggest takeaway I had when was when I actually played against them right after the all-star break,” Rogers recalled. He was with the Giants then, and Toronto swept them in three games at Rogers Centre.
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“When I faced the hitters, I didn’t feel like they chased the ball, didn’t feel like they swung and missed at all and every time I was kind of in leverage pitch count they fouled stuff off,” he said.
He looks forward to travelling to Dunedin, Fla., to join the rest of the pitchers and catchers when spring training starts on Feb. 12.
“I can’t wait to talk to all of those guys and see what it was like to pitch in a championship series and the World Series and kind of learn from them,” he said. “It doesn’t seem like they need much help so I am going to just try to fall in line and hopefully contribute where I can.”
He didn’t need much convincing to accept the Blue Jays’ offer.
“I’ve had plenty of teammates who played for them,” Rogers said. “Nobody says, ‘You are going to like it there.’ Everybody says, ‘You are going to love Toronto.’”
