Here Comes Kumar rocker to the show finally on Thursday he's going to make his debut for the Texas Rangers first I just want to give some background and I know you can do it better than I can JJ because we were debating this on foul territory today the story of Kumar rocker going back to his time with the Mets and you can clarify for me not showing Medicals because you don't have to but then you get picked the Mets don't like the Medicals they end up not taking him fill in the blanks for us here yeah exactly that so basically the Mets took him uh first round and you don't have to share Medicals before you're you're picked but once you are picked before you sign you know obviously there are there is going to be Medicals there's going to be exams and the Mets for whatever reasons whatever they saw that they weren't comfortable with that mean they didn't want to necessarily like they it meant that they were not willing to agree to the deal the pregra deal that they had agreed to with uh with rocker that or the parameters as often are the case with first round picks so basically in these kind of situations the Mets were protected in that they had a pick they get an extra pick the next year the spot after that um and then the uh you know the the basically in Kumar rocker's case he ended up going higher the next year and to be not you know we should note then did have Tommy John surgery which didn't seem like that was necessarily what the Medicals we didn't get ever a full story of what the U that's understandably there's a lot of times that's rumor more than it is fact of of what they were worried about but he did miss some time kind of had a long way back but here we are he comes off the Tommy John surgery has a couple of Rusty outings in the complex League goes to double a dominates goes to tripa a dominates even more uh his start a couple weeks ago was pretty much as good as any start you'll see in the miners all year uh 16 batters retired 15 of them was just completely in control and here we are getting ready to watch him make his MLB debut on Thursday and it was shoulder than Tommy John right you had the shoulder surgery then the Tommy John surgery so if you are a club like the Mets and you turn to your doctors you are saying okay there definitely was a problem here but whatever we fast forward now he's back on a mound and he's going to be on a big league Mound and Ben battler what are you expecting from him do you think he could be a big deal in The Bigs yeah I expect him to come out right away uh and certainly the stuff that he has right now is front of the rotation stuff like we talked about given the injury history is he going to the durability to consistently throw 150 18 80 Innings a year I don't know that's hard to say there's certainly more risk in his case but right now he's throwing an upper 90s fast ball so you got to be ready for upper tank velocity as a hitter and then he's throwing a Wipeout slider uh I don't know how there there aren't many pitchers in the minor leagues or or really at any level of baseball right now that have the combination of fast ball and slider that rocker has it's you know it's it's a hard mid 80 mid to uper 80s slider and hitters are just swinging missing constantly at that pitch it seems to be unhitable now it's double A triaa hitters it is upper level hitters but it's not major league hitters but I don't see why any reason why the that that level of success is not going to continue even against Major League hitters JJ do you feel the same way about the Arsenal and what to expect yeah it's funny when we're talking about the health and all I think we're seeing the Kumar rocker that we last Saw kind of in 2019 when he was utterly dominant through a no hitter in a do or ey Super Regional game against Duke was just as impressive well I guess not as impressive because he wasn't throwing no hitter but dominant in the post you in Omaha helping lead Vandy to a to a title and was just basically the the biggest baddest amateur pitcher in in the country at that point we haven't always seen that since then 21 kind of his draft year we saw flashes of that but he wasn't that level of dominant that kind of stuff every time out now we're seeing it you know we we'll see what he does against Big League hitters but like like Ben said you watch it what he's been doing how he's located that fast ball which touched 100 you know is up upper 90s pretty much most the time and he's locating it really well he's commanding it but it's that slider that slider is kind of really a downer slider sometimes you could even call it a curveball as far as the break although 85 86 87 miles an hour really has more kind of the power of a slider but the thing that also stands out with me about about that pitch is it's a pitch that he's commanding really well he's using it to righties and lefties and it's pretty kind of it's equally effective against both because again it's not breaking away as much as it is down but the other thing about it is even if he misses a little bit with it it's still not a pitch that even if you make contact with it it's really hard to square it up now he does have other pitches I I don't want to make it sound like he doesn't have a change up or anything like that but it is something where it's that fastball slider combo if he's getting ahead early in counts watch out because the slider especially he can he can throw it for strikes but he can also throw it out of the Zone he can make it Chase it especially if you're gearing up for 97 98 99 this is the guy that the Rangers kind of were hoping they were getting when they drafted them it is kind of crazy to see that the Rangers now have speaking of Andy Jack lighter and Kumar rocker in this rotation I know we've seen kind of some ups and downs with lighter in the big leagues I expect rocker to have a little bit of a of a quicker easier transition big Le just because there's a little bit more margin for error with him than there is with lighter because lighter's really heavily relying on a forest team up in the zone fastball that if it's right he gets swings and misses if it's wrong it's a home run the only thing I'll disagree with JJ On from what he said there is that I don't think this is the Kumar rocker of old that that we're seeing now I think as dominant as Kumar rocker was at Vanderbilt this is the best version we've ever seen of Rock ER I mean he's he's now sitting in the upper 90s now maybe he's not throwing you know seven eight Innings like he was at at Vanderbilt but we're seeing a better fast ball and as good as his slider was in college I think it's an even better pitch now wow I mean that's great I could add one thing to that also the other thing about this is we're seeing control and command from him at an elite level as well his strike throwing right now he's getting ahead of hitters batter after batter after batter outing after outing and it's not like he's going three either you know he's been stretched out again not it by 2024 terms he's been you've been seeing him go five innings so I do think he's kind of ready for this I think that this is kind of a perfect leaping off point if you're the Rangers give him a couple of starts in the big leagues at the end of the season see what he does but then it also kind of gives you that chance to kind of evaluate a little bit okay who's our guys for our rotation for 2025 sh are free you know a free agent but a lot of candidates a lot of whom are coming off of injury and this allows them to have a little bit more of a sense of kind of figuring out okay how young do we go how many how much do we turn this over to the young guys how much do we rely on the vets do you remember how crazy it was when he was taken as the third overall pick in 2022 I would say that was one of the more shocking picks in the draft in the last decade JJ just based on the fact that he had gone through it with the Mets was taken tenth at that time okay and usually if you get dinged for Medicals that means you're going to get pushed further back and the Rangers almost not doubl down but said we're not buying it we feel good about what we've seen from him now for years that it is worth the risk for us and really kind of made that draft if you look at that draft it was kind of a it it was they didn't a lot of teams love to spread their risk out the the the Rangers kind of concentrated their risk in a couple of pictures and if Kumar rocker uh again shows what he's showing in the if he does that in the big leagues and does that you know for the next couple of years even then they won on that risk it's a risk when you take a pitcher especially one who has an injury history but there aren't many pitchers in baseball who have the kind of stuff that Kumar rocker does when he's fully healthy and right now we're looking at a fully healthy Kumar rocker all right so the global perspective now on the Texas Rangers and where they're at I mean you're mentioning two names that have been talked about for years now in the system for Texas JJ and Jack lighter and Kumar rocker so where do you think this team is at from an organizational perspective do you remember the last time you know you did rankings for the team side where Texas was uh they I mean they're a little bit they're they're kind of middle of the pack if I remember correctly because they do have it's a little top heavy right they have rocker they have Sebastian Walcott who just got promoted to doublea although you know again these late season promotions good for him it's also a little bit class a season's over you move him up to doublea so gets to play a little bit longer but I I I do look at them and say there is some star Talent here there's some upper you know some really impact potential impact guys we moved rocker into our top 30 and our top hundred that's much how much we think about him uh and kind of what he's doing right now and so they do have kind of some star Talent here I would say again there's there's some depth but I wouldn't say that's it's overwhelming depth but Ben the other thing that kind of just jumps out to me is is this is a team that if everyone's healthy which was a big if they have a lot of answers already at the big league club where they don't like if if if between rocker and ligher and you know maybe they've got some other arms in the system as well they don't need a ton of help here because if everyone's healthy they got Seager they've got semian they got young they've got Carter they've got you know Langford who we kind of even forget about because he's now a full rookie year but there's a lot of young Talent here to go with some very very talented and very high price vets yeah and for years we've talked about the difficulties the Rangers have had in developing pitching uh or just keeping pitching healthy and right now two of the biggest stories in their farm system are rocker obviously and Alejandro Rosario who for two years had a seven plus erra at Miami always had really good stuff always kind of tease you with his talent and now you know he he's developed into one of the better pitching prospects in the game emilano Koto Winston Santos two International arms they've signed who've taken big steps forward this year too so uh it's definitely very encouraging I don't know somebody in Texas probably deserves a raise because uh this is pro this is the best we've seen their pitching development I think in in several years okay so Texas fans get excited about Kumar rocker I mean that's top end stuff if he can bring that to the big leagues and keep himself on the field