Kumar Rocker Is Lastly Coming to the Majors

Yeah what the heck, let’s watch the tremendous regional no-hitter once more.

That is Kumar Rocker at his peak: A 19-strikeout no-hitter within the NCAA Event. (Additionally: Hey, look, it’s Joey Loperfido!) Watching that video, you’d get the notion that he ran as much as the mound that evening in Nashville and received the Duke lineup to swing at each single 59-foot slider he threw. You wouldn’t be too far off. Peak Rocker was one in every of my favourite school gamers ever, as a result of he had the whole lot you’d need from an athlete. He was massive, he was bodily, he was expert. To look at him was to look at an excitable teenager (which he was) function the physique of a significant league ace (which he had).

Pitchers like him come alongside solely so usually, guys who not solely mow down school hitters however do it in a style that makes you surprise how even professionals will ever cope. Stephen Strasburg, Gerrit Cole, Carlos Rodón, Paul Skenes, and Rocker.

The straight line to the majors ended up not being so straight. There was COVID, and the emergence of Jack Leiter as the higher Vanderbilt pitching prospect, and issues about Rocker stagnating. In spite of everything, this was a child who by no means ought to’ve made it to varsity within the first place, who roughly solved the sport as freshman, profitable a nationwide championship and being named most excellent participant of the Faculty World Collection alongside the way in which.

Then Rocker received Brady Aiken’d by the Mets, spent a 12 months within the wilderness of impartial ball, then received drafted within the first spherical once more, this time by the Rangers. The final time I noticed Rocker pitch was in March 2023. I occurred to be in Arizona for the World Baseball Traditional, and tagged together with Eric Longenhagen to look at Jacob deGrom and Nathan Eovaldi make simultaneous minor league rehab begins on adjoining again fields on the Rangers’ facility in Shock.

Rocker was beginning yet one more minor league spring coaching recreation, and the slider seemed superior. It bit and dove and tempted and deceived A-ball hitters, lots of whom had been frankly inferior to the competitors Rocker had dominated in school. However that was the tip of the excellent news. Rocker was solely throwing within the low 90s, and will find neither his fastball nor his slider. He seemed damaged. Two months later, Rocker went in for Tommy John surgical procedure.

It’s simple to neglect that annoying element about can’t-miss prospects: They miss on a regular basis. I began to fret that perhaps Rocker would go down as a legendary school performer whose skilled profession was undone as a result of it began three years later than it ought to have.

To not fear. Rocker is making his main league debut tonight in opposition to the Mariners.

It’s slightly belated — Rocker is sort of 25 now — although the Rangers didn’t have him waste a single pitch greater than vital within the minors. Since coming back from Tommy John, Rocker has made simply seven begins throughout Double- and Triple-A, totaling 29 2/3 innings. In that point, he’s allowed simply 13 hits, three earned runs, and 4 walks whereas hanging out 47.

Rocker’s two Triple-A begins received tracked and entered into the Baseball Savant database, and the outcomes are illuminating. His four-seamer averages 98.1 mph and performs as much as a most velocity of 99.9 mph. He’s additionally throwing a high-90s sinker and a low-90s changeup, each of which characteristic roughly 15 inches of arm-side motion. This spotlight reel of Rocker’s first Triple-A begin consists of an audacious right-on-right changeup for a swinging strike.

That leaves the slider. It’s the pitch Rocker threw probably the most over these two outings, making up 55 of the 132 pitches he threw.

Now, a pair weeks in the past, I used to be fairly unkind to the slider as a category of pitch. After evaluating different secondary choices to express, mature artwork implements, I mentioned the slider was like a crayon.

Seems some artists can do so much with a field of crayons.

In these Triple-A begins, Rocker threw 55 sliders, as I mentioned, and opponents swung 31 occasions. Eighteen of these 31 pitches had been exterior the strike zone, and 23 of these 31 swings resulted in a whiff.

I don’t actually know methods to contextualize a 74.2% whiff fee, even in a two-start pattern. Right here’s the very best I can do. The highest whiff fee on any pitch in baseball this season, minimal 100 pitches, is Mark Leiter Jr.’s splitter, which generates a swing and miss 58.6% of the time. (Rocker actually can’t escape the Leiter household, even in random statistical comparisons.)

Clearly, a splitter just isn’t a slider, and Triple-A just isn’t the majors, however pitches with excessive whiff charges are typically chase pitches — both the hitter swings and misses or lays off the pitch for a ball. Simply whether or not the pitch leads to a strike, both by hitting the zone or producing a whiff, Rocker is forward of the very best swing-and-miss pitch within the league.

It’s mainly unheard-of for a single pitch to generate a called-strike-plus-whiff fee over 50%. Something over 40% is elite. In line with Baseball Savant, solely 5 pitches have been thrown 50 or extra occasions in Triple-A this season and generated a CSW% of fifty% or larger. Certainly one of them is Rocker’s slider. One of many others is Blake Snell’s curveball.

I’m making an attempt very, very laborious to not get again out over my skis with Rocker. There may be mainly zero monitor file of minor league success for him, and no matter his presents could also be, massive league hitters are stronger, faster, and smarter than something Rocker has confronted earlier than. I don’t know if he can maintain the hassle to throw the way in which he does for 90 pitches a recreation, as soon as each 5 days. He’s had bother maintaining his mechanics collectively — lots of the issues he confronted each at Vanderbilt and early in his skilled profession needed to do with letting his launch level drop.

None of that is sufficient to dampen the thrill over what’s occurring now. Rocker is making his main league debut, coming off the heels of a white-hot run by the higher minors, wherein he was pumping upper-90s fuel and throwing an unhittable breaking ball. That is an occasion I seen as a digital certainty from about April 2019 to June 2021, and had more and more despaired of ever attending to witness within the three years that adopted. You don’t need to miss it now that it’s occurring for actual.