HOUSTON — For the first time in six weeks, the other half of the Rangers’ dynamic Vandy Boys duo will pitch in a game on Thursday.
Right-hander Kumar Rocker, who has been in an unofficial development program to address some mechanical items since early August, will throw two innings for Triple-A Round Rock at Sacramento. The Rangers would like to keep open the possibility that Rocker could pitch in the majors sometime during the final 10 games of the season.
“We want to get him back in a competitive setting to get a better sense of the things we’ve been working on,” general manager Ross Fenstermaker said.
Rocker, who turns 26 in November, last pitched in a game on Aug. 7 for Triple-A Round Rock, a week after he was optioned to the minors. In that last start, he allowed nine hits and five runs in five innings, including a pair of homers at Albuquerque.
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It came a week after he’d allowed three runs in four innings of his last major league start against Seattle. When the Rangers took him out of the rotation at Round Rock, it was with the intent of getting him to work on raising his release point upward. It had slipped downward as the season wore on.
In 64⅓ innings in the majors this season, Rocker has a 5.88 ERA. He pitched an additional 16⅔ innings in the minors. There was very little in-between in his outings. He was either very sharp or wholly ineffective. In half of his 14 outings, he went at least five innings and compiled a 2.25 ERA. In the other half: He allowed 31 runs in just 24⅓ innings.
His season, to date, has not been terribly dissimilar from college mate Jack Leiter’s 2024 season, in which the young pitcher struggled even more profoundly in the majors and went through a stretch on the developmental list working on delivery issues. Leiter has made huge strides this year. Perhaps the biggest differences is that Leiter was able to stack up innings experience, the foundation for growth. He had 197 innings in 2023-24. Rocker, on the other hand, has 127⅔ innings over the last two seasons.
He is not going to the Arizona Fall League and is not expected to participate in Instructional League games. The Rangers would ideally like him to get more innings this year, but also want to be cognizant of the fact that he had shoulder surgery in 2022 and elbow surgery in 2023. Fenstermaker left open the possibility that Rocker could participate in winter league games somewhere.
“Progress for young pitchers isn’t linear,” Fenstermaker said. “There are going to be lots of learning opportunities for him to know what plays up here and what doesn’t. We went through some of this with Jack last year.”
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