As you've likely heard, we don't have any live-action contests to cover at LetsGoPeay.com right now. What we do have is free time; oodles and oodles of free time. Enough free time to swap oodles of emails with various people who would know to create a snapshot of the 10 best players in Austin Peay baseball history. Week two begins with the submariner who rewrote every relief record across Austin Peay and the Ohio Valley Conference.
Defining Tyler Rogers as 'just' a reliever doesn't do him or what he meant to Austin Peay's 2012 and 2013 teams justice. He was Austin Peay's answer to Mariano Rivera, Craig Kimbrel and every shut-down closer you've ever heard of.
When Rogers took the ball, it was game over for the opposition.
It's shocking, in retrospect, how quickly he became so good for the Govs. He barely pitched in high school,then transitioned from a conventional throwing motion to the drop-down arm angle he would become known for during his first year at Garden City Community College in Kansas… and by his junior year in Clarksville, he was setting the program single-season saves record. Quite the meteoric rise.
In his final season, Rogers was the lights-out fireman for the best team in program history. He started the year with 15 straight scoreless appearances and gave up earned runs in just four of 41 appearances. His 2012 numbers had been good; his 2013 numbers (7-2, 23 saves, 41 strikeouts in 49.2 innings, a 1.63 ERA and a .169 opponent batting average) were mind-boggling. His 23 saves not only obliterated the OVC record, he briefly held the NCAA single-season record before it was eclipsed later during that season's NCAA College World Series. The Govs won their third-straight OVC championship and Rogers was named both OVC Pitcher of the Year and earned myriad All-American honors—he was the first pitcher primarily in a relief role to earn OVC Pitcher of the Year accolades.
Unflappable. That was always the word that came to mind with Rogers. No matter the scenario, Rogers' icy gaze terrified batters, as did the movement on his pitches and the deceptive velocity he generated. And he proved, every time, that his reliability was one of his defining traits.
Rogers was a 10th-round draft pick by the San Francisco Giants in 2013. After seven seasons and two appearances in the Triple-A All-Star Game, he made his big-league debut in August 2019 with the Giants.
