{"id":344842,"date":"2025-12-13T06:54:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-13T06:54:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/344842\/"},"modified":"2025-12-13T06:54:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-13T06:54:10","slug":"blue-jays-sign-tyler-rogers-to-three-year-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/344842\/","title":{"rendered":"Blue Jays Sign Tyler Rogers To Three-Year Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Blue Jays are in agreement with free agent reliever Tyler Rogers<\/a> on a three-year, $37MM contract, reports Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic<\/a>. The deal, which is pending a physical, includes an $11MM vesting option for the 2029 season, specifics of which have not been reported. Toronto has a full 40-man roster and will need to make a corresponding move. Rogers is represented by Frontline Athlete Management.<\/p>\n

Rogers, who\u2019ll celebrate his 35th birthday next week, secures a sizable payday to pitch at the back of the Toronto bullpen. One of the sport\u2019s most distinctive pitchers, Rogers is a soft-tossing submariner who bided his time awaiting an MLB opportunity. He was a 10th-round pick by the Giants in 2013 who signed for $7,500 after his senior season at Austin Peay State University. Rogers spent the next six years in the minor leagues, performing well all the way up through Triple-A but without the raw stuff to get the attention of the big league club.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t until the end of Rogers\u2019 third full season in Triple-A that he received an MLB look. He was nearing his 29th birthday and close to calling it quits to pursue a career as a firefighter (as Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area<\/a> covered in 2020). The Giants finally gave him an opportunity at the end of the \u201919 season. Rogers tossed 17 2\/3 innings of three-run ball to hold his roster spot. He broke camp the following year and has never gone back down to the minors \u2014 not even on a rehab stint.<\/p>\n

Rogers has played six-plus seasons in the big leagues without going on the injured list. While there\u2019s obviously some luck involved in avoiding any fluke injuries, it\u2019s clear that his underhand delivery puts less stress on his arm. Rogers has made 403 appearances since the start of the 2020 season. That\u2019s 30 more than any other pitcher. Most of those outings have come in high-leverage situations, as his arm angle continues to flummox hitters.<\/p>\n

After posting a 4.50 earned run average as a rookie, Rogers has turned in a 3.04 mark or better in four of the past five seasons. He ranks near the bottom of the league in whiffs and has never posted a league average strikeout rate. That\u2019s to be expected for a pitcher who throws an 82-83 MPH sinker and a sweeping breaking ball that clocks in around 74 MPH. It\u2019s a profile designed for weak, ground-ball contact. Rogers gets that year after year, and he almost never puts batters on via base on balls.<\/p>\n

While some pitchers with extremely low arm slots can struggle with opposite-handed batters, that hasn\u2019t been an issue for Rogers. He has held lefties to a .235\/.289\/.336 line in 776 career plate appearances. Right-handed hitters haven\u2019t fared much better, turning in .246\/.282\/.350 mark in nearly 1000 trips to the plate.<\/p>\n

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Rogers has spent the bulk of his career in San Francisco, including a two-year stretch where he overlapped with twin brother\u00a0Taylor Rogers<\/a>. The Giants fell out of contention shortly before the trade deadline and flipped the impending free agent to the Mets for middle reliever\u00a0Jos\u00e9 Butt\u00f3<\/a> and prospects Blade Tidwell<\/a> and\u00a0Drew Gilbert<\/a>. Rogers continued churning out results in his new home, pitching 27 1\/3 innings of 2.30 ERA ball. He finished the season with a career-best 1.98 earned run average behind a 62.1% grounder rate while leading MLB with 81 appearances.<\/p>\n

The Mets unsurprisingly wanted Rogers back, but they balked at what turned out to be a surprisingly lucrative contract. He more than doubled MLBTR\u2019s prediction<\/a> of a two-year, $18MM deal. New York has also seen\u00a0Edwin D\u00edaz<\/a>,\u00a0Gregory Soto<\/a> and\u00a0Ryan Helsley<\/a> sign elsewhere. They\u2019ve added Devin Williams<\/a> to close but will need to find multiple setup arms from the right side.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the role Rogers should continue to fill with the Jays. Toronto was open to supplanting\u00a0Jeff Hoffman<\/a> in the ninth inning, but they didn\u2019t come away with any of D\u00edaz,\u00a0Raisel Iglesias<\/a> or\u00a0Robert Suarez<\/a>. Rogers had a brief run as San Francisco\u2019s closer in 2021 but has otherwise been a setup man. He was fourth in MLB with 32 holds this past season and handily leads the majors in that category over the last six years. Rogers joins Louis Varland<\/a> as the top leverage arms in front of Hoffman.<\/p>\n

The Jays could still look to add a better left-hander than Brendon Little<\/a>, but Rogers becomes the fifth member of their projected bullpen who cannot be optioned to the minor leagues. Hoffman,\u00a0Yimi Garc\u00eda<\/a> and\u00a0Eric Lauer<\/a> all have the five-plus years of service time to refuse any minor league assignment. Tommy Nance<\/a> is out of options. Varland can be optioned but certainly isn\u2019t in jeopardy of being sent down. If the Jays have all six starters healthy going into the season, that\u2019d leave only one spot for Little or another left-handed acquisition. That\u2019s to say nothing of the out-of-options\u00a0Justin Bruihl<\/a> and Rule 5 picks\u00a0Angel Bastardo<\/a> and\u00a0Spencer Miles<\/a> \u2014 all of whom have an uphill battle to stick on the roster.<\/p>\n

Those are secondary considerations for an all-in Toronto team. The $12.333MM average annual value pushes their estimated luxury tax number to $294MM, as calculated by RosterResource<\/a>. That\u2019s already easily a franchise high before considering the possibility that they add\u00a0Kyle Tucker<\/a> or bring back\u00a0Bo Bichette<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That\u2019ll be their second straight season paying the competitive balance tax. They\u2019re hit with a 42% tax on spending between $264MM and $284MM and taxed at a 75% rate from $284MM to $304MM. Any spending above the final threshold comes with a 90% penalty. The Rogers deal will come with an approximate $8-9MM tax bill. It also firmly pushes them beyond the $284MM mark at which their top pick in the 2027 draft is moved back by 10 spots (though that was basically inevitable after the Dylan Cease<\/a> and\u00a0Cody Ponce<\/a> signings).<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a significant investment in a 35-year-old reliever. The Braves also went to three years, at $15MM annually, to sign Suarez on Thursday. That was the first three-year contract for a reliever that age since 2020. There hadn\u2019t been a three-year term at more than $10MM per season for a 35-year-old bullpen arm since\u00a0Mariano Rivera<\/a> almost two decades ago. A closer who sits around 99 MPH, Suarez breaking that precedent wasn\u2019t as surprising. The Jays are betting on Rogers\u2019 unconventional style to age equally well.<\/p>\n

Image courtesy of Kyle Ross, Imagn Images.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Blue Jays are in agreement with free agent reliever Tyler Rogers on a three-year, $37MM contract, reports…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85,30701],"class_list":{"0":"post-344842","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-mlb","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-tyler-rogers"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}