teammate Trevor Story<\/a>, with whom he played several seasons in Colorado.<\/p>\n\u201cHaving a chance to possibly get back with Story was a big attraction,\u201d Rodgers said. \u201cWe played together a little bit in 2019 and 2020 and then I got pretty much a full year with him in 2021 and I felt like we bonded well up the middle (of the infield). I felt like he had that presence, had that demeanor where I fed off him and I learned from him. He\u2019s a great dude, a great teammate and I look forward to being around him some more.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a really talented player,\u201d said Story. \u201cThere\u2019s some versatility there. Taking ground balls with him at second, you see why (he won a Gold Glove). I think that\u2019s obviously his main strength. But from the offensive side, he can impact the ball. There\u2019s some damage in there. It\u2019s just about health for him, but the upside was high.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rodgers got a few months to experience life as a bench player in the first half of last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnderstanding that platoon role or coming in late on defense,\u201d recalled Rodgers, \u201cyou always have to be ready. It all happens pretty quick and you have to be ready for anything. I was able to learn things on the hitting side, about how I move, about myself and what I\u2019m good at and what I\u2019m maybe not so good at, getting into the bio-mechanics of my swing, which I hadn\u2019t done a lot of.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow, we\u2019re feeding off all the things I learned last year and Pete (Fatse, hitting coach) and all the hitting guys are really great with finding little things and finding things that are a little bit more comfortable for me in the box and I think we\u2019re heading in the right direction.\u201d<\/p>\n
On a roster with a lot of lefty hitters, Rodgers offers one of the few righthanded bat options off the bench.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe work that we\u2019re doing right now is a lot of lefthanded heaters, lefthanded breaking balls into me,\u201d said Rodgers. \u201cWe\u2019re really trying to master that.\u201d<\/p>\n
From a defensive standpoint, Rodgers ordered a first baseman\u2019s mitt two weeks ago and is up for the challenge of learning a new position. Being able to contribute at second, third and first would duplicate the coverage that Gonzalez might otherwise provide.<\/p>\n
\u201cRomy\u2019s a great dude and I\u2019ve played against him for quite some time and I wish nothing but health and success to him,\u201d said Rodgers. \u201cI\u2019m just really trying to take advanrage of any opportunity I\u2019m handed and whatever they see and whatever I earn, it\u2019s a chance to help this team. That\u2019s obviously the big goal for me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT MYERS, Fla. \u2014 You don\u2019t have to tell Brendan Rodgers how devastating an injury can be to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":579822,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2375],"tags":[152,5,141,48,2542,4,89,2543],"class_list":{"0":"post-579821","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-red-sox","8":"tag-american-league","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-boston","11":"tag-boston-red-sox","12":"tag-bostonredsox","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-red-sox","15":"tag-redsox"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116093493513759566","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579821"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579821\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/579822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}