Local baseball fans heading out to the Tampa Bay Rays’ weekend series at Tropicana Field will have a chance to see plenty of familiar faces on the turf – and it has nothing to do with the home team.

Four members of the Detroit Tigers played their high school baseball in Hillsborough County, a very interesting occurrence considering that means nearly one-fifth of the Tigers’ active 25-man roster hails from the same county.

“It’s unheard of. It’s unexplainable,” said Tigers outfielder Matt Joyce, who played at Armwood.

Joyce, a rookie, is joined on the Tigers’ roster by left-handed pitcher Kenny Rogers (Plant City), infielder/outfielder Ryan Raburn (Durant) and outfielder Gary Sheffield (Hillsborough).

“Yeah, it’s pretty unique to have four of us from the same county,” Raburn said.

Sheffield said the group of former county standouts has formed a nice bond over the fact they all grew up playing baseball within about 25 miles of each other.

“When we found out in spring training, we just became close after that and just started talking about when we were in high school and coming home and stuff like that,” he said.

Sheffield is the only one of the four in Detroit’s starting lineup for Friday’s game against the Rays. Rogers is scheduled to start for the Tigers Saturday.