Kumar Rocker is one of the Texas Rangers’ top pitching prospects and he just threw 5 shoutout innings in his dominating High-A Debut. It was the kind of debut that Rangers fans have dreamed about.
The Rangers selected Rocker with the third overall pick in the 2022 MLB Draft. The former Commodore took care of business against the Wilmington Blue Rocks (Nationals) tossing 5 scoreless innings.
He got through the 1st inning on 8 pitches, all 8 for strikes and had 2 strikeouts. Jacob deGrom did the same thing in his start tonight for the Rangers.
Rocker held the Blue Rocks to only 2 hits through his 5 innings pitched.
He only threw 53 total pitches/41 for strikes. That’s a 77.3 % strike rate. He tallied 8 strikeouts/6 of those were swinging. He generated 12 swinging strikes, 8 were called strikes.
Rangers fans have been looking forward to Rocker’s debut and it was a good one. Truthfully, it couldn’t have been better.
Kumar Rocker’s final line in his High-A Debut with the Hickory Crawdads:
Kumar Rocker: (1-0, 0.00)
- 5 IP
- O R
- 2 H
- 0 BB
- 8 SO/ 6 swinging
- 53/41 strikes
Larson Kindreich replaced Rocker and pitched two scoreless with two hits and 1 strikeout.
Bradford Webb replaced Kindreich in the bottom of the 8th. The Blue Rocks were able to score two runs on a triple and a groundout in the bottom of the 9th but fell short in their rally.
The Crawdads won by a final of 3-2.
I don’t want to jump the gun here but we may be seeing Rocker in Frisco in short order.
