The clock is starting to tick on Jake Rogers, not that the 25-year-old is thinking like that as he heads into his fourth full season in the Tigers' organization.
"Nah, man. Honestly I feel really good," Rogers said Wednesday. "I'm 25, 26, whatever it may be, but I feel as athletic as ever. Going (into camp), it's just going to be fun. Just enjoying it as I go and not really thinking about age at all."
It feels like a long time ago that Rogers arrived as a big-time catching prospect in the Justin Verlander trade. Back then, the Tigers' rebuild was just beginning. Their manager was Brad Ausmus. Rogers would make his big-league debut two years later under Ron Gardenhire.
Now he's trying to make the team under AJ Hinch -- the same manager Rogers one day hoped to play for when the Astros took him in the third round of the 2016 draft. Rogers and Hinch talked briefly back then. They talked for almost an hour over the phone earlier this offseason.
"I knew him a little bit from before, so we had that connection," Rogers said. "He asked how it’s been and what I thought about the organization and some of the guys. Just kind of picked my brain a little bit and I picked his. He was just very encouraging, saying you gotta go earn your job. As far as conversations go, it was nothing but good."
Rogers hopes it was the first of many. In fact, he's looking forward to some harder conversations to come. Hinch isn't just a World Series-winning manager. He's a former catcher who spent seven years in the majors, including a stint with the Tigers in 2003. Maybe he's the key to unlocking Rogers' potential.
"Him being a big-league catcher, he’s definitely going to be hard on me. And I’m probably going to enjoy it a little too much," Rogers said with a smile. "I hope he gets onto me a little bit. That’s how you learn. It’s just gonna be good, being able to pick his brain and being able to see from the outside-in. It's definitely different when you have a catcher there who's able to nit-pick it a little bit more."
Hinch will certainly be a useful resource for Rogers when it comes to catching. But ultimately, Rogers has to prove he can hit. He struck out in nearly half his at-bats with the Tigers in 2019 and last year he failed to make the team. So he spent the summer on the taxi squad in Toledo, trying to patch the holes in his swing.
He hasn't stopped this winter. Rogers said he's been making trips to California to work with his personal hitting coach. And he even connected this week with the new hitting coach of the Tigers, Scott Coolbaugh, who happens to live near Rogers in the Dallas area. It was Hinch who put them in touch.
"It's been good," he said. "I feel better than ever, honestly."
The biggest difference?
"Just being able to work counts," he said. "I’ve always been able to trust myself up there and have a good eye, but as far as these swing changes, I'm able to see the ball a lot better and pick it up a little earlier. So cut down on the strikeouts hopefully and get some more bat-on-ball hard contact."
In the back of his brain, Rogers has to know time is running out. He's no longer the top catching prospect in the organization; the Tigers drafted Dillon Dingler with the first pick of the second round in 2020. He's no longer positioned to make the big-league roster in 2021; the Tigers signed veteran Wilson Ramos this week.
But Rogers is still a factor in the team's future, and this feels like the year he has to prove it.
"Whoever they sign, whoever they decide to bring up, I just gotta be me and hopefully I can make a name for myself and earn a job," he said. "I definitely have to earn it. It’s not just going to be given to me going into Lakeland. I just gotta go out there and earn it."