Austin Peay's 46th Athletics Hall of Fame Class will be inducted during ceremonies held Feb. 23-24, 2024, includes baseball's Tyler Rogers and Alex Robles, men's basketball's Chris Horton, volleyball's Ashley Slay, athletic trainer Joni Johnson, and football's Philip Farinella. The athletics department will recognize the class at halftime of the men's basketball game against Lipscomb on Saturday, Feb. 24. Tickets for that day's basketball doubleheader, which includes the women's basketball game against North Alabama, are available for purchase online through Ticketmaster.

If you're a baseball fan, you know when you feel confident in your team's closer and when you don't. If that guy's warm-up music begins to play and your heart races with excitement; if it makes you amped up just knowing he's coming in; if you can look around at people in opposing teams' gear and see them ashen-faced or with their heads in their hands; that's how you know you've got a good one.

For two seasons, Tyler Rogers was 100% that dude for Austin Peay. And when he departed Clarksville, he did so as one of the most unhittable pitchers in school and league history.

To properly interpret Rogers and his success, think first of where he came from and how he ultimately reached the pinnacle of his sport. It's hard to remember now, but Rogers arrived at Austin Peay as a late bloomer and really was something of an underdog. He hadn't begun pitching seriously until late in his high school career; as such, he needed two years of seasoning at Garden City Community College in Kansas, the first of which he spent adapting his motion from a traditional straight-backed approach to the drop-down style that has become his trademark. You've likely seen what it looks like when Rogers pitches, but if you haven't, it looks like this.

"He was almost from the ground up in his delivery," said Gary McClure, former Austin Peay head coach and now, Rogers' fellow APSU Athletics Hall of Famer. "And because he comes from that low angle, it has a ton of top spin and has incredible sink to it. He hides the ball well, and it's just completely different from what you see every day."

I don't say this to denigrate the man, who clearly found something that worked for him; more power to him, in my opinion. But that is also not the natural way human beings are taught to throw; Rogers and his coaches at Garden City had to basically complete a full-bodied restoration of his mechanics, largely on the fly, and in real time as he began his journey in collegiate baseball.

But after an eye-popping sophomore campaign at Garden City (6-3, 13 saves, 2.39 ERA, 50 strikeouts in 49 innings), he caught the eye of Governor pitching coach and recruiting guru Joel Mangrum, now a minor league pitching coordinator for the Guardians. According to Mangrum, Rogers was recruited to be the closer in Clarksville immediately; it was days, not weeks, before he put a stranglehold on the job.

"I think we knew within his first couple of bullpens he was going to play a huge role for us in the late innings," McClure said. "Joel definitely worked with him to make some adjustments and smooth out his delivery. He looked like he would develop the command, and in that role you look for someone a little different, that has that make-up and can get you K's in certain situations."

All he did in his junior season – his first as a Gov – was set the program single-season saves record with 12. The unassuming righty was called on 38 times that season, and struck out 52 in those appearances to establish himself as a vital member of the team that won the second of Austin Peay's three-straight Ohio Valley Conference Tournament titles.

Which… all that stuff was nice. But since all he did as a senior was put most of his records and career-highs out of reach, his first season in Clarksville often gets overlooked. More's the pity, since he was electric that season too; among his exploits, it feels like the double-play he induced against Indiana State in 1-0 thriller in Eugene during that season's NCAA Regional in Oregon gets lost to the sands of time. That's not fair; given the stakes, it might have been one of his most impressive saves as a Gov.

But that senior campaign… that's vintage. If there's some kind of Mount Rushmore-style monument* to the greatest individual seasons in Austin Peay baseball history, there is no way to leave Rogers' 2013 campaign out of the discussion. The pertinent details are as follows:

• 7-2, 23 saves, 41 strikeouts in 49.2 innings, a 1.63 ERA and a .169 opponent batting average. That's just the regular run-of-the-mill counting numbers, and they 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.
• He started the year with 15 straight scoreless appearances and gave up earned runs in just four of 41 appearances.
• 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. Multiple All-American nods also followed this campaign.

*- My own personal choices: Rogers' 2013, Craig Massoni's 2013, the Nate Manning/Chuck Abbott 1996 season (we'll be taking both in tandem, sue me if it's cheating), and Alex Robles' 2015 when he was an all-conference hitter and pitcher.

"We won a lot of games those two years," McClure said. "If you're going to win like that, you have to have a guy you can depend on and go to at the end of a game. We felt like all we had to do was get to the eighth or ninth inning with a lead or a tie and this thing was over."

After his collegiate career wrapped, Rogers was a hot item in that season's MLB Amateur Draft, where the Giants took him in the 10^th round – the highest draft slot for a Gov since both Abbott and Manning went in the top-10 rounds of the 1996 draft. After a seven-year odyssey through the minor leagues, which included two appearances in the Triple-A All-Star Game, Rogers broke into the bigs in 2019 and has been there ever since, recording a 2.96 ERA across 262 appearances for the club.

He's the closer, as he has been pretty much from the moment he walked on campus. He closed out wins for the Govs and he'll also close out this Hall of Fame series. See y'all in February.