The Rogers twins keep waiting for somebody to pinch them.
Chatfield alums Tyler and Taylor are in their first season together on the San Francisco Giants and checked off another pie-in-the-sky feat this week with a three-game series at Coors Field, where they admitted their intertwined baseball lives feel more like dream than reality.
“We keep having these ‘This is frickin cool’ milestones,” Taylor said. “In spring training, in the corner we had three lockers that were in its own little section. That set the feeling in. Then we opened up a Yankee Stadium — and the conversation was like, ‘Dude can you imagine 15-year-old us believing this?’ Then Tuesday, we drove to the ballpark together and played catch on Coors Field.
“Just when we’re done (soaking in one moment) as brothers, another one comes and might top it.”
The southpaw is Taylor, who’s in his first season with San Francisco. He signed a three-year, $33 million deal as a free agent this past offseason after previously playing for the Twins, Padres and Brewers. The submarining right-hander is Tyler, who’s in his fifth season with the Giants’ bullpen, the club he came up with.
The brotherly relievers took contrasting paths en route to becoming the 10th set of twins to play in the majors, the fifth to pitch in the same game and, this year, the fourth to be big-league teammates.
Taylor was a highly-regarded prep prospect who earned a Division I scholarship to Kentucky. Tyler, meanwhile, wasn’t a full-time varsity player for Chatfield until his senior year. Even then, he only pitched in four games (13 innings) with a 7.54 ERA. So while Taylor went to play in the SEC, Tyler went to Garden City Community College with a career in firefighting on his mind.
When GCCC coach Chris Finnegan suggested Tyler change his arm slot from the normal three-quarters to submarine in the pitcher’s first year at the Kansas Juco, Tyler had nothing to lose.
“There was a guy a year older than me on the team doing it and having success with it, so that helped me with the transition to it,” Tyler recalled. “And on the flip side, I went to Garden City to do fire science. ‘This is perfect,’ I thought, ‘I’ll go to GC to do fire science, play some ball and come back to Denver to be a firefighter.’ That was the plan, so I just I had fun with the (arm-slot) switch and it felt natural.”
Tyler went from Garden City to Austin Peay, where he set the school record for saves as a junior, then broke the NCAA Division I single-season record with 23 saves as a senior. That led to the Giants drafting him in the 10th round in 2013. He debuted six years later after spending the better part of three years in Triple-A.
As Tyler was bootstrapping his way through college and the minors, Taylor forged his own path at Kentucky, quickly carving out a spot in the rotation there and earning a nod as the starting pitching in the Cape Cod League all-star game in 2011. All that led to the Twins drafting him in the 11th round in 2012, and he debuted four years later.
It was a twin success story that not even then-Chatfield coach Mike Yansak saw coming, even after Taylor pitched a perfect seven-inning game at a showcase his sophomore summer and beat previously-undefeated and top-seeded Cherry Creek in the first round of the Class 5A state tournament as a junior.
“After Taylor’s sophomore year, it seemed like out of nowhere he picked up about eight miles an hour on his fastball, and suddenly he was throwing in the middle to upper 80s,” Yansak recalled. “He sort of jumped ahead of his brother during that junior year. But Tyler continued to develop, even though he never had the same velocity.
“As coaches, we had a feeling that if Taylor continued to develop, he’d probably get drafted and he might have a chance to make it. But did any of us think that both of them were going to make the majors? No, I don’t think anyone thought that. But looking back you see what you see now: Two fiercely competitive guys who had the right disposition on the mound. It didn’t matter if they just struck somebody out or gave up a double off the wall. They always kept their composure, even if there was fire in their eyes.”
In San Francisco’s bullpen, Taylor’s brought the veteran presence, while Tyler has become one of the best relievers in the National League. While they’ve learned how to handle the moment on the mound, they still both get antsy when the other pitches.
Taylor paces. Tyler, wary of the broadcast cutting to him, gives his best poker face as he admits he’s still “trying to figure out” how to calm his butterflies when his older brother (by 30 seconds) is on the hill.
“They have the same sense of humor, so it’s a great vibe with them out there because they’re cracking each other up, making each other laugh — until one of them (gets the call to warm up),” Giants left-handed reliever Scott Alexander said. “Then they’re each super nervous when the other’s in, which is sort of funny to see, because it’s plain and obvious they’re trying (in vain) to keep it cool.”
Butterflies aside, the synergy between the two is working. Following this week’s three-game series at Coors Field, where the Giants swept the Rockies, Taylor has a 3.38 ERA in 25 games with one save. He rebounded from a rough start to the season, as the southpaw has a 0.60 ERA over his last 15 games, with 23 strikeouts to five walks.
While the Giants are getting good recent value out of the veteran acquisition, Tyler’s been dominant. The righty has a 1.74 ERA in 27 games with two saves. Entering the weekend he is one of six MLB relievers who has an ERA under 2.00 with at least 30 innings pitched.
The identical twins have pitched in the same game 11 times — back-to-back in eight of those games, including in victories on Wednesday and Thursday over the Rockies at Coors Field. In-between, they and their family are relishing the small moments.
“Watching those two throw, and getting to hang out together and act like the Little Leaguers and teenagers that I used to see out in the front yard, that’s the coolest part of what they’re doing now,” said dad, Scott Rogers, who is pleased to have cut his baseball travel bill in half this season. “They’re 32-year-olds who have become 12-year-olds again.”
Just like their contrasting paths to the majors, the twins are also finding success in different ways.
Tyler is a groundball pitcher. With a mid-80s fastball and mid-70s slider, he relies on deception, movement and unfamiliarity to keep hitters off-balance. Because of his arm slot — his average release point is 1.2 feet from the ground — Tyler’s fastball has extraordinary drop to it. League average drop for a fastball is 15 inches, but Tyler’s average drop is 53 inches.
Add in the fact that he’s pounding the strike zone (54.7% as strikes, with league average at 49.9%) and the edges of the plate (45.3% of his pitches), and the result is just four outings in which he’s allowed earned runs this year. As expected with a fastball velocity that ranks in the bottom one percentile of the majors, he’s not getting much swing-and-miss, but he’s generating lots of grounders (50.6% of balls in play) and weak contact (1% of balls in play are barrels, well below the league average of 7%).
No one’s more pleased with those numbers than Taylor, who saw his brother never waiver despite being in his shadow most of high school.
“He never got jealous, never blamed anyone, never asked why I was doing what I was doing and getting that attention and he wasn’t,” Taylor said. “He never had any animosity toward me — even in high school, he would catch me, he would help me get better… That said a lot about him, how he supported me that way. I always wanted to give that back to him, so now I’m his biggest fan.”
Taylor, who features a low-80s slider and mid-90s two-seam fastball, racked up 30 saves for the Twins in 2019 and was an all-star in Minnesota in ’21 when he posted a 3.35 ERA in 40 games. But 2022 brought adversity. He was traded on opening day to San Diego, then traded again at the deadline to the Brewers in a high-profile deal for Milwaukee closer Josh Hader.
“(That) was tough mentally because I loved the Twins and was all in with them, and we had a good club there, and I was bought in there,” Taylor said. “Same thing in San Diego — great team with high aspirations, and I bought in there. To do it a third time was really challenging, especially with a group I didn’t know. But fast-forward until now, and if those events didn’t happen, I probably wouldn’t have ended up (with the Giants). So in a weird way, it ended up working out for the better.”
This year, Taylor, a fly-ball pitcher, has average movement and a below-average K rate. But he’s in the 96th percentage in expected batting average, meaning he’s influencing hitters’ exit velocity and launch angle more than his ERA would suggest.
As much is different between the twins, much is the same, like the fact both are among the best in baseball when it comes to dominating lefties — Tyler to the tune of a .048 average against, Taylor at .083.
As Tyler explains, they both have the same goal in mind: Ride out this MLB dream together as long as possible. While Taylor’s deal runs through 2025, Tyler has two years of arbitration left before becoming an unrestricted free agent.
“I appreciate (the contrast) between us, but really at the core, we’re kind of the same,” Tyler said. “We’re sinker/slider guys normally known for throwing a lot of strikes and going right after guys. The arm’s different and the arm slot’s different, but look close, it’s not that much different.
“We have two more years on paper together, but you never know. We’re trying to keep this going as long as we can.”
