This is a series of evaluations that will be done this offseason on every player that closed the season on the 40-man roster for the Minnesota Twins, with one appearing every weekday from now until each player has been evaluated. The plan is to start with Mr. Albers and move all the way through the pitchers, then to the catchers, infielders, outfielders and finally those listed as designated hitters on the club’s official MLB.com roster. That means we’ll wrap it up with Miguel Sano sometime in the first week of December.
- Name: Taylor Rogers
- 2016 Role: Flexible left-handed arm that was able to do some longer work and some specialist stuff as well. Had stretches where he got righties out consistently and others where he struggled, which will also dictate where he works next season.
- Expected 2017 Role: Will go as far as his ability to get righties out allows. Not likely to close, but left-handed set-up role not out of the question.
- MLB Stats: 3.96 ERA (3.57 FIP) in 61.1 innings, 9.4 K/9, 2.3 BB/9, 1.29 WHIP, 51.4 percent GB rate, 0.6 fWAR.
- MiLB Stats: 4.50 ERA (3.22 FIP) in 18 Triple-A innings, 7.5 K/9, 3.0 BB/9 and 1.67 WHIP.
- Contract Status: Just completed rookie eligibility, so not a free agent for at least five more seasons.
2016 Lowdown:
Rogers went in the 37th round to the Baltimore Orioles back in the 2009 MLB draft, but fulfilled his commitment to the University of Kentucky, where the Twins grabbed him in the 11th round of the ‘12 draft. The Twins have a bit of history with the school — Andrew Albers, Logan Darnell and Alex Meyer to name a few — so there’s clearly a level of comfort there. As an advanced arm, Rogers was put to work right away by the Twins and by the end of that season had already thrown more than 30 innings at Low-A Beloit.
Rogers moved through the organization rather quickly, working virtually exclusively as a starter while posting good, but not eye-popping numbers. Of his 99 minor-league appearances, 87 have come as a starter with a 3.33 ERA, 7.0 K/9, 2.3 BB/9 and a WHIP of 1.28.
The Twins didn’t move Rogers to the bullpen exclusively until he reached the big leagues this past season. In fact, two of his seven appearances at Rochester to open the season were starts. Still, most likely what was going to hold Rogers back as a starter — in addition to so-so strikeout rates — was that he was, at least at times, susceptible to right-handed hitters.
Here’s a look at his left-right OPS splits since joining the organization:
Year | OPS against (LHH/RHH)
- 2012 – .520 | .674
- 2013 – .524 | .689
- 2014 – .555 | .703
- 2015 – .402 | .831
- 2016 – .558 | .832
Basically, those sorts of things get magnified the higher up a player moves through the organization, so it was pretty good awareness by the Twins to move him to a relief role when they did. Rogers responded well, fanning more than a batter per inning while keeping the rest of his rates more or less in check.
All hope is not lost for Rogers to eventually be able to get righties out consistently, either. While Rogers consistently dominated for virtually the entire season — save for a brief stretch in May — there were some stretches in the season where he got righties out fairly consistently as well.
Month | wOBA against from RHH
- May – .396
- June – .403
- July – .195
- August – .300
- September – .450
Let’s hone in on July and August for a bit. Opposing righties hit .206/.229/.206 against Rogers in July and just .226/.351/.290 in August. It’s probably not realistic for Rogers to do what he did in July over the long haul, but August would certainly be more than acceptable.
So let’s try figure out what he did differently in those months. On the whole, Rogers favors a sinker as his preferred fastball. Brooks Baseball has him at 54 percent overall as far as pitch usage on the sinker, and it’s a big — in fact, almost exclusively the sole — reason why he had a 50-plus percent groundball rate. Rogers also leans heavily on his curve (36.6 percent) while mixing in a slider, change and four-seamer, the latter three all well under the 10 percent mark.
Splitting that out, Rogers attacks lefties with virtually just the sinker (43.7 percent) and curve (48.5), though he will mix in the slider (7.3 percent) as well. He keeps his repertoire from getting unnecessarily broad against lefties because he doesn’t need to dig into his toolbox any further — the numbers back that up wholeheartedly. It’s against righties that Rogers throws the whole kitchen sink. He brings the sinker way up (nearly 60 percent), drops the curve to just under 30 percent and will throw a slider (6.1 percent), change (2.7 percent) and even a few four-seamers (1.6 percent) to try win the battle against righties.
One thing that’s interesting is that despite his reliance on the sinker against right-handed hitters, Rogers was no more apt to induce grounders from them. In fact it was quite the opposite, as righties hit grounders at a rate of 49.6 percent against Rogers while lefties were at 55.2 percent. It also shows up in raw numbers, as Rogers allowed six of his seven home runs to righties and a .462 slugging percentage to them as opposed to a .286 mark to lefties. There’s no surprise that’s coming from elevating the ball.
So what did Rogers do differently in July and August? Parsing Rogers’ repertoire out month-by-month shows us something interesting. Basically, all of the sliders than Rogers threw to right-handed hitters came in June when his usage peaked at 28.5 percent. The rest of the months of the season, he used the slider 0 percent of the time, with the exception of 2.9 percent in August. That’s right, Rogers basically threw the slider to righties for a bit and then scrapped it. June wasn’t a particularly difficult month for Rogers on the whole — 3.38 ERA, 12-3 K/BB ratio in 13.1 innings — but what we do find is that he did allow a home run on the slider this season. Just one.
By coming through MLB.com data, we can find that it’s a two-run home run by Chris Johnson of the Miami Marlins in the seventh inning on June 9 — the same day Phil Hughes’ season ended when he was hit by a comebacker off the bat of J.T. Realmuto. MLB.com says the home run came off a two-seam fastball — so that’s a dead end. It seems like if Rogers maybe gave up a particularly big home run or hit off the slider, that might be a reason why he scrapped it.
Outside of how he handled righties at times in 2016, it’s hard to imagine things could have gone much better for Rogers in his first MLB stint.
But ultimately, that looks like the primary difference between what Rogers was doing before July and August compared to what he did in those months. Nothing much else pops off the page. Whiff rates don’t jump off the page for any of Rogers’ pitches in those months against righties, nor does anything in opponents’ batted-ball stuff — outside of results, of course.
Since Rogers is a reliever and these are basically 10-inning samples, we’re basically forced to chalk it up to ebbs and flows. It could be as simple as facing some easier right-handed hitters in lineups those months. Ultimately though, it’s hard to draw a conclusion that Rogers is certain to be an adjustment away from becoming an asset against righties. It’s not for lack of effort however, based on how he employs his repertoire — i.e. the kitchen sink — against them.
Grade: B+. Outside of how he handled righties at times in 2016, it’s hard to imagine things could have gone much better for Rogers in his first MLB stint. Given the structure of the team’s bullpen, they may look to him to get more righties out moving forward — something he’ll have to adapt to. Otherwise, he’s another LOOGY on a team that already has Ryan O’Rourke and Buddy Boshers as well as Mason Melotakis on his way.
