Talking to Taylor and Tyler Rogers, who became the first set of identical twins to pitch against each other in a Major League Baseball game in April, can feel like, as Yogi Berra put it, déjà vu all over again.
Identical twins are perfect genetic copies of each other, and the physical similarities between the two relief pitchers are striking, their remarks and mannerisms uncannily alike. But they pitch in wildly different ways. Taylor (career ERA: 3.14), who plays for the San Diego Padres, is the more conventional of the two, and throws much harder, topping out around 98 mph. Tyler (career ERA: 3.08), a San Francisco Giant, is a submariner who relies on unusual mechanics and movement to succeed.
This divergence might seem curious, but for researchers who study twins, it’s not exactly surprising. The Rogers brothers are mirror image twins, meaning that one is left-handed (Taylor) while the other right-handed (Tyler). Physical reversals like this are common in identical twins—not just handedness but also fingerprints, the direction of their hair whorl, and small physical attributes like birth marks. Identical twins can also differ in all kinds of bigger ways, including intelligence, personality, running speed, height, and weight. In fact, studies of identical twins have become a key tool in the study of human genetics—it’s an ideal way to study the power of environmental influence—and the different paths the Rogers brothers took to the big leagues is a fascinating look into the making of a pro ballplayer.
Like many identical twins, Tyler and Taylor share a lot. While sitting in their dugouts before their teams played a Friday night game in May, they noted that they are the same height and nearly the exact same weight. In high school they shared a truck, a Toyota T100 with 200,000 miles on it, and a single cell phone. One got to drive the pickup while the other had the phone; the next week they switched. They separately pointed out that they were dressed the same until they could dress themselves–with one deviation.“We had the same clothes, but they were different colors,” said Taylor. (He was always in blue while Tyler wore green.)
Even their differences are similar: the best they could come up with is that they disagree on which of mom’s casseroles the other likes best. The other disagreement, and that might be too strong a word, is about what it means to be on time. “He’s not showing up late,” said Taylor of Tyler, “but he’s just not early.”
The Rogers brothers are the tenth set of identical twins to both play in the MLB, and the first since 2003, and it would be easy to assume that they simply hit the genetic lottery—but it was a little more complicated than that, and Tyler’s route had far more twists and turns.
“In high school Taylor was the big star—junior year in high school he was all-state and I was on JV. He had big aspirations of being a Major League Baseball player, and I just had fun playing baseball,” said Tyler. “Obviously when you’re on JV and your brother is playing varsity you really don’t think Major League Baseball is that attainable for you.”
While Taylor went to the University of Kentucky and got drafted in 2009, Tyler went to junior college. Though far from the bright lights of SEC baseball, that choice turned out to be Tyler’s big break—the head coach at Kansas’s Garden City Community College suggested he throw sidearm. That distinctive style, with his pitching hand almost touching the ground as he releases the ball, is what gives Tyler unique movement on his pitches. Unlike virtually every other pitcher in baseball, his pitches can travel up as they go from the mound to home plate.
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“The change gave me confidence on the mound, it was something that was mine and unique to me,” said Tyler. That feeling was reinforced when he went home and played catch with his brother, who co-signed the new approach. He transferred to D1 Austin Peay for his junior year, got drafted a year later, and made his Major League debut with the Giants in 2019, at which point Taylor had already been in the Majors for three years. But for two ballplayers with such different paths, they’ve ended up in a remarkably similar spot: solid relievers for National League West teams, good for about 2.5 wins above replacement in their best seasons.
So what accounts for that earlier difference? “It could be that strength and conditioning and training and repetition might be some factors, but I would guess that their early throwing mechanics, especially when they were very young, is the big distinguishing factor between the twins,” said Glenn Fleisig, research director at the American Sports Medicine Institute, who might be the world’s foremost expert on pitching, having studied the biomechanics of thousands of pitchers of all levels and ages.
“Early on,” said Fleisig, “Taylor’s body might have figured out more efficient mechanics, leading to an increase in velocity and performance.” That, along with left-handedness, a desirable trait for pitchers, might have given him an early boost in throwing velocity and opportunities to pitch, in a self-reinforcing cycle.
But as important a role as genetics and training plays in the development of elite skills, identical twins may enjoy another advantage: the constant presence of a perfectly balanced training partner. Damon Minor, the hitting coach for the Giants’ triple-A affiliate in Sacramento, and half of the last pair of identical twins to play in the MLB, credits part of his success to trying to keep up with his identical brother, Ryan, a two-sport athlete selected in both the NBA and MLB drafts. “I think it was a positive, especially for me,” he told me, “I always had that drive to try to compete and be as good as him.”
That explanation makes sense to Taylor Rogers: “That’s what’s cool about twins, you’re not having a big brother beat up on a little brother 24/7,” he said. “So, one brother isn’t always used to losing or easily winning. Without knowing it we just got better at sports because we had each other.”
Perhaps neither would have had the success in baseball if they hadn’t been born twins, in other words. It’s not as if they can imagine it any other way. “I get the whole ‘being an individual’ thing,” Tyler told me, “but at the same time you can’t split us apart. Part of who we are is being twins.”