DETROIT — This isn’t how Jake Rogers imagined spending his 30th birthday.
Rather than taking the field, the Tigers catcher is sidelined — and doing very little activity.
Technically, Rogers is in rehab mode, but he’s not yet throwing or swinging. For the past 10 days, his main focus has been resting a strained left oblique.
The silver lining? Rogers said he woke up Thursday feeling the best he has since the injury occurred on April 8.
“I’ve been doing a lot of rehab, small exercises, just easing back into it,” Rogers said. “That’s about it. Hopefully in a few more weeks I’ll be back out there.”
The injury didn’t come from anything unusual — just a normal swing in the batting cage. Still, it’s frustrating that a single swing, out of the thousands he takes annually, caused the setback
“I was going through my usual pregame routine, about an hour and 15 minutes before the game on April 8,” Rogers recalled. “I hit some balls off the machine and felt fine.”
Then he stepped into the Trajekt batting cage — a high-tech setup that replicates opposing pitchers’ stuff and pitch paths.
“I took one swing and immediately knew something was off,” he said. “It made me drop into my catcher stance. That’s when I realized something was wrong. I told Dillon Dingler he’d probably need to get ready, and then I went straight to A.J. (Hinch).”
That one swing was all it took. Rogers had never dealt with an oblique issue — or anything quite like this.
“It’s definitely unfortunate, but here we are,” he said.
The Tigers wasted no time placing Rogers on the injured list and called up veteran Tomás Nido from Triple-A Toledo.
Rogers’ absence has been noticeable. Widely regarded as one of the game’s top defensive catchers, he’s valued not just for his strong arm and pitch framing, but also for his game-calling skills behind the plate.
But Dillon Dingler has stepped up in Rogers’ absence, making the most of his first real shot as an everyday catcher. If there’s a silver lining to the situation, it’s that Rogers’ return could give the Tigers an even stronger catching tandem than before — with Dingler gaining valuable experience and confidence in the meantime.
