When Jake Rogers went down with a forearm strain back in July, the Tigers expected him to miss a couple weeks. Now he might be shelved until 2023. Rogers underwent Tommy John surgery Wednesday on his right elbow, A.J. Hinch announced before Detroit's series finale in Pittsburgh. He'll miss the rest of this season and most if not all of next season.
It's a big setback for the 26-year-old catcher, who had just begun to prove himself at the big league level.
"Jake went from a player who was in pencil in the plans to somebody who had had firmly entrenched (himself) as part of what we were doing move forward," Hinch said.
Rogers, who came to the Tigers in the Justin Verlander trade, started this season in Triple-A and got a shot in Detroit when Wilson Ramos went down with an injury early in the year. He responded by posting an .802 OPS in 38 games -- after posting an OPS of .481 in 35 games with Detroit in 2019 -- and living up to his reputation behind the plate.
"When he came up and grabbed the opportunity and took off, much is said about the homers and he was having more competitive at-bats, but he cleaned up his catching," said Hinch. "He was doing a lot of good things behind the plate in calling pitches, receiving and throwing, doing everything that we ask as an organization to help us win.
"He made major strides this season. Those don't go away just because he's injured and will miss significant time. I think Jake had earned his way back to being very much a factor in what we're doing."
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With Rogers sidelined for at least the next 12 months, the Tigers will likely enter next season with a catching duo of Eric Haase and either Dustin Garneau or a free-agent acquisition. They're also waiting on prospect Dillon Dingler in Double-A Erie who could be the club's catcher of the future.
"It hurts our depth and quite honestly hurts our major league team right away," said Hinch. "We do have the two catchers that are here now and we'll have our offseason discussions when we get there, but losing Jake for this long a time is clearly going to have an impact on how we feel we need to make our team better."
The initial diagnosis for Rogers wasn't so serious. But he experienced soreness in his arm when he started rehab, which prompted questions about the ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow. Even then, it wasn't immediately clear if the ligament needed to be fixed. Hinch said Rogers "went to doctor after doctor who could not tell if the ligament was impacted or not." Eventually Dr. Keith Meister, who also performed Michael Fulmer's Tommy John surgery in 2019, determined Rogers needed to go under the knife.
His recovery begins now.
"It's a significant blow to us because he had turned the corner in making himself an established big leaguer," said Hinch. "But we need to get him healthy."