SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Tyler Rogers’ wife, Jennifer, remembers meeting his parents for the first time. She was nervous. Not about impressing her then-boyfriend’s family. She didn’t know if she’d be able to tell him apart from his twin brother, who rode along in the truck to pick her up.
Seventy-five times over, every player with the San Francisco Giants this spring training is experiencing the same feeling.
Before Taylor Rogers signed the three-year, $33 million free-agent contract that reunited him with his twin brother in the Giants’ bullpen, he and Tyler sat around his Littleton, Colorado, house (which they share for six weeks every winter), and discussed the potential downsides. This first week, with scores of interview requests and teammates struggling to tell them apart, was the first thing that came up.
“We were like ‘Let’s try to find the things that would stink about you being on the Giants, things we wouldn’t like,'” Tyler said. “We talked about this first week, just getting the whole twin thing figured out with everybody. I don’t want to say ride the storm out because that’s bad. … It’s going good. We’re making some good headway. I think people are getting used to it.”
The verdict?
“First day was a little iffy. I think I walked up to them, like, that’s Taylor over there, right? Now I think I’ve got it down,” said starter Alex Wood, whose locker is directly next to the brothers. “But damn if they don’t look exactly alike, literally.”
“Surprisingly, it’s not as easy as I thought it was going to be,” manager Gabe Kapler said. “It’s just not. I see how they’re different, but when they’re right next to each other, like, I’m not a thousand percent sure right now. … The funny thing is that for us, it would be really embarrassing (to mix them up). For them, it’s like, of course this happens.”
Reliever John Brebbia took special care to avoid that exact scenario. He wanted to be prepared for the first time Taylor walked into the clubhouse.
“So,” Brebbia said, “I looked online and I looked at pictures. I thought it was going great. I was like, ‘I can do this. I can absolutely do this.’ And I get here, Day One, and one of the Rogers brothers is walking down. I’m looking at him and I’m like, ‘Tyler.’ And he goes, ‘Nope!’ and keeps going. Like, dang it.”
It doesn’t make it any easier (or does it?) that the brothers’ lockers are right next to each other. They play catch together every morning. They work out together. They go station-to-station in the same group of pitchers. They do, at least, live in separate houses here. (And Taylor wears No. 33, distinctively different than Tyler’s No. 71, but only because Mitch Haniger claimed No. 17 first — imagine that, mirror-image twins with mirror numbers.)
“Yin and yang, for sure,” Wood said. “They’re doing everything together. It’s honestly pretty friggin’ cool, to be with your friggin’ brother in big league camp, it’s wild.”
On Wednesday, it was time for their group of pitchers to face live hitters for the first time.
First, Tyler faced Joc Pederson, David Villar and Stephen Piscotty, with his distinct submarine motion.
Then, Taylor faced the same group of hitters, firing overhanded bullets out of his left arm.
“It was weird,” Pederson said. “It was like you’re looking at the same person, twice.”
“Even taking the twin aspect out of it, they’re such polar opposites in terms of arm angle, the pitch sequence, the pitch tunnel — it’s completely different,” Villar said. “It’s like they just switched gloves and Taylor just went out there and threw underhand and Tyler went out and threw lefty. You’d never know which one it is until they bring out the glove.”
There are some tells, besides their number or their dominant hand, that teammates have picked up on.
No. 1, Taylor has the enviable hairline; Tyler’s is slightly more faded.
Look closer, though, and you’ll see their cowlicks also go in opposite directions. Like their throwing arms, it’s a feature of being mirror-image twins, a phenomenon that occurs in about 25% of identical twins.
One childhood friend’s mom used to say she could tell them apart by their ears. Another family friend, who has known them their entire lives, doesn’t need any clues. Like their family, he just knows.
Reliever Sam Long said he has a secret way to tell them apart; Pederson wouldn’t share his method, either.
“I will never tell anybody,” Long laughed. “It’s on them to figure it out.”
The biggest clue, for those who have come to know them, is their personalities.
“Tyler was a little bit more of the happy-go-lucky, didn’t care where things were at,” their dad, Scott, said. “Taylor was more, we’ve got to make things right and straight.”
“Ty’s more laid back and a very smiley guy, very chill,” echoed Jennifer. “Tay’s a little more serious.”
Nonetheless, she took precautions before that first meeting.
Before the brothers arrived to pick her up, she sent a Snapchat to Tyler, “so I could see what he was wearing and I would know when they walked in, like, ‘Oh that one’s mine!’
“But it’s funny,” she said. “Right when they walked in the door I didn’t even need to do that. I could just tell the difference between the two of them.”
“There’s not one thing; we just know,” Scott said. “We got that question a lot, long before they were in the spotlight, like how do you tell them apart? I just do.”
