‘You’re learning until the day you retire’: What Rogers took from All-Star debut
Trevor Rogers was a little intimidated by Max Scherzer. He was pleasantly surprised when he realized Manny Machado knew who he was. He was, quite frankly, a little shocked at just how starstruck he was by Mark Melancon.
The Miami Marlins’ starting pitcher met dozens upon dozens of MLB stars in his three days in Denver for the 2021 MLB All-Star Game, but none of those meetings stuck with him quite like a “random” conversation with Kevin Gausman. The All-Star pitcher, at one point, came up to the rookie to introduce himself and Rogers saw an opportunity. Like Rogers, Gausman was a former first-round pick and first-time All-Star. Unlike Rogers, Gausman is 30 and needed to toil in the majors for eight seasons to finally capitalize on his full potential and get to an All-Star Game.
“I kind of wanted to pick his brain. He’s been up here for a while and I kind of just wanted to see how did he get all this success,” Rogers said Saturday in Philadelphia. “I just really asked him, ‘What is the difference between this year and all the other years?’”
Rogers, 23, is has the look of a future superstar, with a 95-mph fastball, two swing-and-miss off-speed pitches, a 2.31 ERA and 122 strikeouts in 101 1/3 innings. Still, he knows his toughest days in the 2021 MLB season are probably ahead of him. Opponents are getting more and more film of him every day, and putting together more comprehensive scouting reports.
He knows success can vanish in an instant. It sort of happened for Gausman, who posted a 3.57 ERA in 2014 as a rookie for the Baltimore Orioles and still hasn’t topped it. This year, he put up a 1.73 ERA in the first half to become an unlikely Cy Young Award contender for the San Francisco Giants.
“The hitters,” Rogers recalled Gausman telling him, “will let you know when you need to make an adjustment. It just took me seven years to figure that out.”
A few days later, it was still the one interaction Rogers was really thinking about as he got ready to make his first start of the second half Tuesday against the Washington Nationals at Nationals Park. He couldn’t remember what Aaron Judge said to him after he got the New York Yankees outfielder to fly out at the end of his one All-Star inning, and he enjoyed chatting with Machado about Jazz Chisholm Jr. and living in Miami, but the Gausman conversation was one of those All-Star moments he felt like he could actually learn from. With only 25 games of major-league experience, it was what he was looking for in Colorado.
Gausman told him about the way his pitch distribution changed throughout his career. In his first five seasons, Gausman threw his slider almost 12 percent of the time and used his splitter less than 20 percent. This season, he’s throwing the splitter 37.5 percent of the time and has used his slider only about 100 times all year. Opponents hit better than .300 against Gausman’s slider for those five years. They were, as Gausman put it to Rogers, telling him it didn’t work.
The main takeaway for Rogers: “You’re reading, you’re learning until the day you retire, and it’s something that I’m going to have to continue to learn and continue to grow. When I see that the hitters are starting to make an adjustment, that’s time for me to make an adjustment, as well.
“A lot of it is just hitting my spots and get ahead, and continue to use my slider a little bit more. If I just mix all three pitches, I think I’ll be alright.”
So far, those adjustments have gone well. Last year, Rogers came up to the Majors earlier than anyone planned, made seven starts and was mostly terrible. His ERA was 6.11 and he only pitched into the fifth inning two times. Over and over again, manager Don Mattingly has pointed to it as a valuable teaching experience.
In retrospect, Rogers was trying to be too perfect. His strikeout-to-walk ratio — 3.59-to-1 this year — was only 3-to-1.
“I was a little bit timid,” Rogers said. “I thought I had to be perfect in the zone.”
In his penultimate start of the 2020 MLB season, Rogers finished by striking out six straight Atlanta Braves. When the season ended, he kept coming back to this outing.
“That really opened my eyes to how aggressive I can be in the zone with my stuff and how well it plays,” Rogers said.
It was the injection of confidence he needed going into his first full season. In his second start of the year, Rogers struck out a season-high 10 batters and lowered his ERA to 1.80. It hasn’t crept above 2.40 since.
Rogers’ last four starts before the All-Star break, though, made up his toughest stretch of the year, as his ERA has risen from 1.87 to 2.31. It may be fatigue setting in or maybe those adjustments Rogers knows are coming.
Maybe, though, he just needs another injection of confidence. A trip to the All-Star break, Mattingly insists, can be the perfect cure.
“Going to that game, being around all the best players in the game, seeing that whole picture — you come back from that with a load of confidence,” he said Friday. “Just seeing that is really good for you as a player, and being able to accomplish that should make you want to continue to be at that level.”
This story was originally published July 20, 2021 at 10:12 AM.
