Blue Jays reliever Tyler Rogers turns the game upside down with an 83-mph fastball

It is not the kind of fastball that typically starts a highlight reel. Tyler Rogers, the Toronto Blue Jays right-hander, throws what MLB classifies as the slowest fastball in the game at 83.1 mph. The pitch travels like it should be easy to time. Instead, hitters keep swinging late, off-balance, and often for the wrong thing.

The reason is not just the speed, it is the way Rogers gets the ball out of his hand. Rogers uses a submarine-style delivery, dropping his arm and releasing from a very low slot. That arm path changes the pitch’s angle to the plate before velocity even enters the conversation. MLB’s own explanation of his approach emphasizes that the combination of delivery and ball movement is what gives the pitch its bite.

Rogers pairs the slow fastball with a breaking pitch that looks, in MLB’s words, like an upside-down slider. The shape of that pitch is meant to disrupt the timing that hitters try to lock in against a slower heater. When the slider starts and runs in a way that contradicts the hitter’s expectations, it can make contact quality drop even when the batter gets the bat into the zone.

What makes the matchup so difficult for hitters is that Rogers’ repertoire is built on deception rather than brute force. A faster fastball can win purely by reaction time. Rogers cannot. So he leans on release point, body angles, and the sequencing that comes from throwing the ball in a way that does not match the conventional blueprint hitters grow up seeing.

Eight years into his career, the “how” of Rogers’ success has become clearer: the pitch is designed to look like a fastball long enough to hold the hitter’s swing, then arrive with a different pace and a different trajectory than the batters’ timing suggests. MLB’s write-up frames his overall effect as late swings, which is a useful shorthand in baseball for how timing and rhythm are getting disrupted.

This is also why Rogers’ role matters for Toronto. In a modern bullpen, matchups are rarely only about a single pitch. They are about the uncomfortable looks a pitcher can repeat under pressure, the kind that keep hitters from settling into a repeatable timing window. Rogers’ delivery and two-pitch framework are particularly effective because the batters must process both the pace and the movement in the same swing decision.

Still, there is a caveat. A slow fastball can be a weapon until an opponent adapts, and any pitcher who relies heavily on out-of-the-ordinary mechanics eventually faces hitters who have studied the release and can cover at least part of the zone. The question to watch next is whether Rogers can keep generating late swings as scouting reports update and video libraries grow, or whether teams will learn how to extend their timing into his 83-mph pitch.