DETROIT — Jake Rogers walked down the visiting clubhouse hallway at Comerica Park on Saturday, and if he was exhausted, it hardly showed.
Rogers, though, has been a road warrior over the past three weeks in a way no MLB player ever has. In a span of 21 days, Rogers suited up and played in games for four MLB teams: the Detroit Tigers, Baltimore Orioles, Boston Red Sox and Chicago White Sox.
As Baseball-Reference unearthed Sunday, no player has ever bounced from team to team to team to team so quickly. Before Rogers, Frank Huelsman in 1904 held the record for the shortest period of time needed to appear in games for four separate teams. It took him 42 days, twice as long as Rogers.
“It’s been a crazy few weeks here,” Rogers said. “A whirlwind, to say the least.”
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So much about all this was odd, and so much of it highlighted the quirks only baseball can provide.
On July 30, the Tigers designated Rogers for assignment. The decision was not made lightly. Once a third-round draft pick in the Houston Astros system, Rogers came to the Tigers in the 2017 Justin Verlander trade. He spent the next nine years with the organization, debuting in 2019 and slowly emerging as a talented defender and unmatched clubhouse glue guy. He was known for his goofy mustaches. He pitched in blowout games and unleashed a nasty knuckleball. But Rogers was hitting only .161 this season and playing sparingly behind Dillon Dingler.
It was late at night on July 29, after most of the clubhouse had cleared out, when manager A.J. Hinch and president of baseball operations Scott Harris told Rogers the news.
“It was a tough conversation,” Rogers said. “Obviously, I spent most of my career here. It was a sore spot. … I got to say goodbye to a few guys, but I got a lot of texts from guys the next day, which kinda makes it a little easier.”
The Orioles happened to be in town and had interest in Rogers, who expected he would either get claimed off waivers or traded before he cleared. Rogers caught a flight home to Dallas while he awaited word on his next stop. The Tigers waited until Baltimore left to trade Rogers in exchange for right-handed pitcher Zane Barnhart.
Rogers soon got on a plane to Baltimore. Next thing he knew, he was wearing an Orioles jersey and entering the eighth inning of a game against the Phillies.
“They were just like, ‘Hey, we’re excited to have you,’” Rogers said. “I figured I was going to be there.”
By Aug. 3, it was the trade deadline, and the Red Sox needed catching help. They traded with the Orioles in a high-profile deal for Adley Rutschman. Rogers was included in the swap.
“A shock,” Rogers said.
After a short flight to Boston, his first game with the Red Sox was against none other than his current employer, the White Sox. Rogers caught the last three innings of a 13-inning epic. He hit a sacrifice fly to help tie the game in the 12th inning.
In Boston, Rutschman started on the IL, and as he neared activation, Rogers saw the writing on the wall. By Aug. 11, after all of nine plate appearances, the Red Sox activated Rutschman and sent Rogers back into DFA purgatory.
“(Craig) Breslow and everybody in Boston couldn’t have been nicer and handled the whole situation perfectly,” Rogers said.
The next team to come calling was the White Sox, who have a league-worst .518 OPS from their catchers this season. Rogers got the word Friday. He had already flown from Toronto with the Red Sox back to Dallas.
“A lot of flying around and a lot of mileage points, for sure,” he said.
Soon, he was on a plane back to — of all places — Detroit, where the White Sox were playing a three-game weekend set against the Tigers with American League Central stakes.
“I texted him and told him, ‘Baseball’s really weird,’” Hinch said.
Said Rogers: “Of course it would happen like that.”
Saturday morning, Rogers was out on the field, holding court with a host of former teammates. He was starting behind the plate that day, and somehow, he found appropriate catching gear. In Baltimore, he had borrowed gear from catcher Chadwick Tromp while he awaited his own Mizuno order. Throughout this journey, Rogers has had to learn new pitchers and study different scouting reports on the fly.
“The craziest thing is trying to learn each guy’s tendencies and what they like to throw,” Rogers said. “You can look at it on paper, but it means more coming from the guys and catching them one or two times to learn it. … It’s been a school of hard knocks situation, but we’re making our way through it.”
For his first at-bat Saturday, fans at Comerica Park rose and gave Rogers a standing ovation. Tiger starter Troy Melton backed off the rubber to offer a brief pause. Over the PA system, they even played Rogers’ old walk-up song — the Garth Brooks ballad “Friends in Low Places.”
“He obviously meant a lot to everybody in this locker room,” Melton said. “It can’t be overstated how important he was, personally helping me become a major-leaguer, not only the stuff on the field but off of it.”
Rogers proceeded to bunt into a rare 1-5-4 double play, but his new team still went on to beat his old one. Rogers has now experienced a bundle of different clubhouses, from the Tigers who have underachieved but fought to keep their season afloat, to a scuffling Orioles squad to a red-hot Red Sox team. Now in Chicago, Rogers is part of an unexpected division leader, a club that just swept the Tigers to maintain a stranglehold on the AL Central. With White Sox catcher Kyle Teel working his way back from an ankle sprain, there’s no guarantee Rogers will be with the White Sox for the rest of the year.
Such is the life of a journeyman catcher. It is a life Rogers is learning quickly and learning well.
On most mornings as a Tiger, Rogers sat at his locker and filled out the Immaculate Grid — the baseball-reference trivia game that involves matching athletes to teams and statistical criteria.
As a personal challenge, Rogers liked to attempt to fill out the grid using only catchers.
Over the past three weeks, one name just became much more valuable on the Immaculate Grid.
His own.