The Jays have made their big move on the relief market, signing Tyler Rogers to a three year, $37m deal with a $11m vesting option for 2029. It’s the largest reliever contract the current front office has handed out.
Rogers, who turns 35 on Wednesday, is atypical for a shutdown reliever. He’s a true submariner, releasing the ball just 16 inches off the ground, the lowest in MLB last season by more than a foot and a half. Three quarters of his pitches are 84mph sinkers with 13 inches of induced drop. StatCast says that’s exactly average among comparable pitches, I think because their algorithm throws up its hands and says he can only be compared to himself. The remainder are 74mph sliders that actually have 14 inches of vertical rise. That’s be pretty average for a four seam fastball. For a breaking ball it’s practically nonsensical. There’s really nobody else doing it like Rogers right now.
As a result, batters have never been able to figure him out. He doesn’t really miss any bats, with a 16% K rate and 85% contact rate allowed. Those are near the bottom of the league. Very little of that contact goes anywhere, though. In his career about 57% of balls in play have been on the ground, and just 35 out of over 1300 have been barrelled up, about a third of average. Consequently, his career ERA stands at 2.76 and the StatCast based xERA model thinks that’s about right.
His low velocity approach has also allowed him to be durable, leading all MLB relievers over the past five seasons with 374 appearances (29 ahead of second place) and 378.1 innings (39.1 ahead). The Jays love them some durability, and Rogers is as much of an outlier in the bullpen in that respect as Dylan Cease is in the rotation.
More than anything, this seems like an extremely Blue Jays signing. They don’t like to pay top dollar for relievers, and they like durability. So they sign a guy who’s got a sterling record of posting when his team calls on him, and who because he’s got such a funky approach won’t get paid like the top-20 reliever his ERA says he is. Of course there’s risk. He’s not young, and guys who live on deception are always at risk of being figured out. But hey, it’s worked for him so far, and if he maintains his career performance over the next three years he’ll be tue second best reliever signed this winter for almost half the price of the guy who was first.
