How building LEGOs got Marlins’ Trevor Rogers in a good place ahead of prove-it year
Trevor Rogers needed a hobby.
After missing nearly all of the Miami Marlins’ 2023 season with a pair of injuries (first to his left biceps and then a tear in his right lat at the tail end of his rehab assignment for the left biceps injury), Rogers wanted something that could help him decompress and not think about baseball and there were only so many round of golf he could play once he was healthy this offseason.
So what did he do?
“I really got into building LEGOs,” Rogers said. “It was awesome.”
The journey began in July, about one month after his final rehab assignment that resulted in the lat tear and essentially shut him down for the season, when a BD-1 Star Wars LEGO set caught his eye on Prime Day.
“I was like ‘Say less.’ Let me see if this is any fun,” Rogers recalled. “And... it was awesome.”
Since then, Rogers has constructed 11 LEGO sets. Among his favorites: Mighty Bowser from Super Mario and Gringotts Bank from the Harry Potter series. Other completed sets include a McLaren Formula 1 race car and Marvel’s Hulkbuster.
Most of Rogers’ collection are on a shelf in his residence in Jupiter. What’s left are in his offseason home in Texas.
“I was locked in,” said Rogers, who added he played with building blocks growing up but never LEGOs. “I would sit down at my kitchen table back home. Three hours would pass and it was like, ‘Today was a good day.’”
After being able to mentally decompress over the past seven months, Rogers is now hoping for good days on the baseball field. He’s entering spring training with something to prove after essentially two lost seasons following a 2021 campaign that saw him finish as runner-up for the National League Rookie of the Year.
Rogers followed that up with poor 2022 season (5.47 ERA over 23 starts and 107 innings) and an injury-shortened 2023 season that saw him pitch just 18 innings over four starts.
“I’ve always had faith and belief,” Rogers, 26, said. “I know what I can do. I try not to look in the past but the truth is I don’t think 2021 was a fluke. I know how good I can be, but the past few years haven’t proven that. I have to prove it again.”
Added Marlins manager Skip Schumaker: “He wants it more than ever because of what happened last year. ... When you have some edge to you, some motivation to you, that’s different. He’s got a lot to prove for himself, and he wants to prove that he’s one of the guys in the rotation and in the rotation for a long time. A motivated Trevor Rogers is a really good thing. But I’m not sure there’s anybody more motivated than him in there right now.”
At his best, Rogers has three pitches he can effectively throw for strikes in his four-seam fastball, changeup and slider.
But he hasn’t been at his best since that 2021 campaign.
He’s hoping an offseason breakthrough will help him return to form. Rogers visited his agency’s new training facility in Arizona in early January to work for about a week and a half ahead of spring training. There, he met Tommy Costello, who specializes in biomechanics.
“I was playing catch and I got about four throws in and he told me to stop,” Rogers said.
Costello then told Rogers he saw “a couple of things that really stuck out” about Rogers’ mechanics. Rogers then put everything together and realized he was using his body in “such an insufficient way” that it was leading to injuries.
“It kind of made sense why I got hurt last year,” Rogers said. “We worked on very small, incremental changes from the ground up. We worked on my delivery to make my body move in a more efficient way.”
The early results?
“I was really pleased with the way the ball was coming out ad the way my body felt after throwing,” Rogers said. “Working with him has been huge. ... The velocity was better, the way it got to the plate was more efficient. The movement on my offspeed was a lot better. Everything just felt better, just felt a lot cleaner.”
Now, just like with his LEGOs, Rogers needs to build on his offseason work as he gets ready for his prove-it year.
.JPG)