Twin thoughts about what might have been
Giants reliever Tyler Rogers and his brother Taylor, a reliever for the Twins, were set to face each other this week
We Americans love our gallows humor.
After the Giants shut their spring camp in March, reliever Tyler Rogers met his dad in Scottsdale, Ariz. Scott Rogers knew how much it hurt his son to lose even part of the 2020 season after Tyler completed such a potholed journey to reach the majors at 28 in August.
“Really?” Scott asked Tyler. “You fight the long road, spend such a long time in TripleA, it looks like you’re going to make it, and then you come up with a pandemic?”
Neither knew how deadly COVID19 would be in the United States. But they did sense that a threegame Giants interleague series that would have happened next week in Minnesota was not going to happen, wiping out an event that would have been an apex of Rogers family pride.
Tyler’s identical twin, Taylor, closes (appropriately) for the Twins. The brothers not only had a chance to face each other while wearing majorleague uniforms, they each might have earned a save in the same series. Only 11 sets of brothers have earned a save in the same season since the stat became official in 1969. The most recent were Todd and Tim Worrell in
1997.
“Up to that point, my debut had been so storybook, and so great,” Tyler said by phone last week from Arizona, where he works out on his own. “To think I could have had a chance to go play in Minnesota against my brother’s team, you can’t even come up with that. There would have been a lot of excitement, for sure.”
Moreover, the bullpens at Target Field are stacked, home on top, visitors just below.
“That would have made for some interesting banter,” Tyler said.
Taylor was born 30 minutes earlier on Dec. 17, 1990. Their DNA might be identical, but their pitching isn’t.
Taylor became a bigleague closer on the strength of a live left arm. Tyler throws righthanded and adopted the submarine approach that Giants fans saw over the final month in 2019, because he lacked the type of arm his brother has.
Their potential matchup was a huge deal for Rogers’ parents, Scott and Amy, Tyler’s fiancee, Jennifer, and more than a dozen firefighters from Littleton, Colo., who were going to fly to Minneapolis for the big todo.
Scott Rogers is the operations chief for the West Metro Fire Department, a generational occupation for the family. Friends in the department sought and received the vacation days they needed to go. They wouldn’t buy plane tickets, though, afraid to jinx Tyler’s chances of making the Giants’ Opening Day roster. Fat chance of that. Tyler not only seemed to have a bullpen job locked up, manager Gabe Kapler said the week that camp closed that he had a chance to close despite owning just 17 bigleague appearances. In his bigleague audition last season, Tyler allowed two earned runs in 172⁄3 innings. He got 26 of his 70 batters to make outs on the ground and struck out 16 more.
Those are great numbers for a pitcher in the launchangle era.
“Taylor and I did talk a few days ago how cool it would have been for both guys to pitch the ninth inning,” Scott said.
The Rogers brothers have not squared off in a team sport — ever. They played on the same Little League teams and at Chatfield High School.
Even when Chatfield’s football team scrimmaged, the twins lined up on the same defense, one at left corner, the other at right corner.
That is where the story diverges.
“Taylor was a big prospect, an allstate pitcher. Tyler was not,” the latter said, laughing as he went third person on himself. Taylor got a scholarship to Kentucky. Tyler did not even make varsity in high school until he was a senior. He was an infielder and the fourth pitcher on a staff that rarely needed more than two for a 20game schedule.
“The fourth pitcher was not even sniffing the mound,” he said.
As Taylor embarked on a journey that led to his 11thround selection in the 2012 draft and a bigleague career now four seasons old, Tyler went to a junior college in Kansas thinking he would become a firefighter.
In a fortuitous development, though, Tyler got to play a little baseball. His coach saw him throw 87 mph and knew that righthanders who throw 87 quickly become expitchers. The coach suggested Tyler try throwing submarinestyle, his body bent 90 degrees at the waist, his pitching hand nearly scraping the mound dirt.
And here he is, nearly a decade later, throwing sinkers and sliders to bigleague hitters from that oddball angle.
The Rogerses are the 10th set of twins to play in the majors and the first since Damon and Ryan Minor. Damon was and remains the Giants’ TripleA hitting coach, but somehow the topic did not arise between him and Tyler in Sacramento. Minor did not know the connection until a reporter asked him about it last year.
Minor’s working relationship with Tyler lasted longer than the pitcher would have hoped. Tyler — and most Giantswatchers — expected the submariner to get a September callup in 2018 after an TripleA AllStar season that yielded a 2.13 ERA in 51 games. It didn’t happen. “It was frustrating because it seemed like he was doing what he needed to do,” Scott Rogers said. “I just had to keep telling him to keep doing what he was doing so they had to bring him up.”
Before Tyler got the call Aug. 27, making his debut the same night, he bought an instruction book to study for a firefighting entrance exam. He was that close to giving up on baseball.
Twenty minutes after his brother earned his 21st save of the year for the Twins, Tyler retired the Diamondbacks on 11 pitches in the eighth inning his debut. His parents and fiancee were at Oracle Park to see it. His twin saw it on TV from the visiting clubhouse in Chicago.
When the Giants presented Tyler with the game ball, he gave it to Taylor, who understood why.
“He just thanked me for supporting him through this whole time and always believing in him,” Taylor, who finished 2019 with 30 saves, said from Colorado. “No offense to his fiancee or my parents, but I think I was the only one who never lost any type of belief that he would make it.”
Tyler then asked him to be the best man at his November wedding to Jennifer. In typical fashion for brothers who share a warped sense of humor, Taylor said, “I’ll think about it.”
They speak daily by phone, Taylor joking that they probably would be at one another’s throat if quarantined in the same house.
Both were always competitive, their father said, but usually not to the point of jealousy, although Dad was concerned with how Tyler would react to Taylor’s successes and talent.
“Obviously, I was aware of that,” Scott said. “When Tay got drafted out of high school and won the Connie Mack World Series before he was 19, and playing on elite teams, we were worried about Tyler.
“When you’re twins, you’re supposed to be the same. (Tyler) let it out a little bit. We definitely kept an eye on his confidence level and selfesteem because it had to bother him a little bit. He’d talk about it but didn’t make it a big deal.”
No deal would have been bigger for the Rogerses than each protecting a ninthinning lead at Target Field in a series that was to begin Monday, even if the family usually steered clear of the topic for the same reason nobody in the dugout mentions a pitcher’s late nohitter.
There was no guarantee they both would be in uniform. Just as it dawned on them that it looked likely, baseball went away.
“It is disappointing,” Tyler said. “You look at it and think, ‘Man, that opportunity may never come back again with professional sports being the way they are.’ What would it be, another three years until the Twins are on the schedule again? So many things could happen in three years.”