It’s supposed to look like 98 miles per hour hissing up in the zone; like a breaking ball cosplaying as a cliff diver; like hitters frantically fouling off anything they can to stay alive for just a little longer. It’s supposed to feel overpowering and inevitable, a battering ram breaking down an old door.
An ace is supposed to showcase everything Kumar Rocker delivered in his major league debut last night. That’s seldom seen in Arlington, and never from a homegrown arm over a sustained period.
Consider Rocker’s forebearers as top pitching prospects over just the past quarter century. John Danks. Edinson Volquez. Thomas Diamond. Brandon McCarthy. Neftali Feliz. Cole Winn. Hans Crouse. Spencer Howard. Most recently, and most frustratingly, Jack Leiter. An entire generation has tried and failed to exert dominance like Rocker did last night, the same dominance he carried over from Round Rock and Frisco earlier in the summer.
That’s left Texas to try and import it, to varying degrees of success. Yu Darvish succeeded in stretches. Chan Ho Park couldn’t whatsoever. Jacob deGrom, who makes his MLB return tonight, reshaped the contours of a modern ace unlike anyone before him. Whether he adds to the legacy he built as a New York Met depends on his capacity to defy the troubling history of double Tommy John surgery recipients.
But there is something alluring about it being homegrown, about such mastery being yours and yours alone, with none of the context belonging to another MLB city or organization. The Rangers have never known that feeling.
It’s far too soon to declare that Rocker will supply it for the next decade, of course. FanGraphs’ Michael Baumann did a tidy job laying out the reasons why Rocker might not, from his spotty health history to some risk of regression in the breaking ball’s effectiveness (he earned a 74.2 percent whiff rate on it in his final two minor-league starts, which, lol) to whether he’ll sustain these results over a full-time starter’s workload.
But last night was incontrovertible proof that Rocker can supply it. His performance against Seattle recalled who he was at Vanderbilt, when Rocker positioned himself between Stephen Strasburg and Paul Skenes on the timeline of historically great college pitchers. (Would you like to watch him throw a 19-strikeout no-hitter in the NCAA super regionals? Of course you would.) Only his body could interrupt him from dicing up major league hitters for years to come.
Then it did. Prior to this summer, that player was thought to be long gone, a dazzling arm chewed up by the perils of modern pitching. Then, without warning, he reappeared: reinvigorated through mechanical tweaks, or force of will, or overdue good future, or perhaps all of that.
Now it’s time to see how long he’ll stick around, and whether eye-popping stats like these and these become standard fare in Arlington. It will take time to suss out those answers, which is alright. The Rangers have spent decades trying to cultivate a talent like Kumar Rocker. Everyone can hold on a little longer to learn if they’ve finally succeeded.
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