The Red Sox announced Tuesday that they've designated catcher Jake Rogers for assignment, a move that closes out one of the stranger stretches you'll see for a big leaguer this season. Rogers had barely unpacked in Boston before getting the news.
Rogers didn't do anything to deserve the boot. In his brief run with the Red Sox, he went 3-for-6 with 2 doubles across 3 games, filling in behind the plate while the team waited on its real answer at catcher. Since 2023 his overall numbers are ugly (.192/.267/.343), but the eye test in a Boston uniform was actually pretty good — he just picked the wrong week to be the emergency option.
That's because the whole point of rostering Rogers was to bridge the gap until Adley Rutschman was ready to go. Rutschman, the former first overall pick who was one of the best catchers in baseball from 2022 through 2024, landed in Boston as part of the same deadline trade that brought Rogers over from Baltimore. Both catchers came from the Orioles in a swap that sent Carlos Narvaez and a package of prospects the other way.
Rutschman made his Red Sox debut Tuesday, batting third and going 1-for-3 with 2 walks, including an infield single. Manager Chad Tracy slotted him into the middle of the order to support Willson Contreras, and he's already lined up to catch Ranger Suarez on Wednesday before a scheduled day off Thursday. That kind of workload plan only happens once the front office is confident the wrist injury that limited him — his OPS dropped from.814 through late June to.666 after the hand issue — is truly behind him.
Rogers' path here is a wild one even by DFA standards: designated by Detroit, flipped to Baltimore, then flipped again to Boston, all inside a matter of days, before getting DFA'd a second time. Because he has enough service time to require his consent for a minor league assignment, Boston had no way to simply option him down — the DFA was the only mechanism available, and it now opens up 2 spots on the 40-man roster.
Don't expect Rogers to be out of a job for long. Defensively capable backup catchers with power upside always find a taker on waivers, and given his week of solid at-bats in Boston, some team figures to see enough to bring him aboard before he ever reaches minor league free agency.