One of Baseball's Top Prospects is Making Debut Against Seattle Mariners This Week
Texas Rangers top prospect Kumar Rocker is set to make his major league debut on Thursday against the Seattle Mariners at T-Mobile Park.
The #Mariners are now in line to face the Texas Rangers' top pitching prospect in his MLB debut on Thursday night in Seattle.https://t.co/cEk0Ad3Ehq
— Seattle Sports (@SeattleSports) September 9, 2024
Rocker, who was selected No. 3 overall in the 2022 draft out of Vanderbilt, has been rehabbing from Tommy John surgery and is going to be on a pitch count/innings limit for the contest.
He's thrown just 36.2 innings this season as he works back and the Rangers reportedly want to keep him around 50 for the season. In nine starts, he has a 1.96 ERA between Rookie ball, Double-A and Triple-A. He's struck out 55 batters in those 36.2 innings.
Rocker is the No. 2 overall prospect in the Rangers organization and the No. 97 prospect in the game, per MLB Pipeline.
The following is a portion of his MLB.com prospect profile:
Rocker is famous for his slider, a wipeout mid-80s beast with power and depth, and he showed it off in both the AFL and in his official pro debut last spring. The quality of his mid-90s fastball varied, as it lacked life and command in Arizona when he worked from a lower arm angle than usual, then got more swings and misses when he threw from a higher slot in 2023. Texas had him incorporate more two-seamers with sink to get more movement on his heater.
The Mariners enter play on Tuesday at 73-71 and 4.5 games back of the Houston Astros in the American League West. They are 3.0 games back of the Minnesota Twins in the wild card race. If the M's are going to make headway in either situation, they need to win the series against the sub.500 Rangers over the weekend. Seeing Rocker will be no easy challenge, but given that he's on a pitch count, perhaps the team can get him out early.
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