Rangers GM Chris Young joined the GBag Nation to discuss the team's decision to call up top prospect Kumar Rocker this week to make his Major League debut.
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00:00We're excited about the announcement that Kumar Rocker is coming up on Thursday.
00:20Can you talk to us about what went into that?
00:22Yeah, it's just a really exciting day for our franchise and for our fans.
00:27Ultimately, Kumar has earned the opportunity to get called up and there's a lot that goes
00:33into it.
00:34But ultimately, we've kind of covered every angle in terms of our decision-making process,
00:40starting with the medical side.
00:41And Kumar has passed all the tests from a medical standpoint.
00:44He's fully healthy.
00:45He's out of rehab mode and in game mode, compete mode.
00:49And from there, it becomes more of a baseball decision and what's right for the player,
00:55for the team, how much experience does he need in the minor leagues, weighing that
00:59with the experience that he would get at the big league level.
01:02But I think the most important piece of this is that we talk about internally all the time
01:07that this is a performance-based game and Kumar has earned the opportunity.
01:11He has done everything he possibly can in terms of his performance to earn this call-up.
01:16And kudos to him.
01:18I'm so happy for him.
01:19He's a great, great person.
01:21And I think he's going to look great in a Rangers uniform.
01:24What do you think about the talk that his numbers compare favorably to what Paul Skeens
01:29was able to do in his seven minor league appearances?
01:32You know, I didn't realize that.
01:34That's not something we compared necessarily when we were making this decision.
01:37So I wasn't aware of really how close those numbers are to each other.
01:44But what I will say is that he's an elite competitor and Paul Skeens is an elite competitor
01:48and they're extremely talented pitchers.
01:51When you have the mental to go with the physical, those guys seem to do special things.
01:55And I put nothing past Kumar in terms of his ability to compete and perform.
02:00And that's why we're calling him up.
02:02How important is it with the economics of baseball today?
02:07Is there a concerted effort to see these young guys up early to be a way to balance off some
02:13of the big spending that you have to do elsewhere on the roster?
02:16Well, there's no doubt.
02:19It's not part of our decision making specific to Kumar.
02:22It's really for every organization, the more homegrown talent you can have and cheaper
02:27younger players, the more flexibility it gives you to sign veteran players to complete your
02:32roster.
02:33So there is certainly a benefit to it, but it's not why we made this decision.
02:37But it's why a pipeline of talent in the farm system is so critically important to the success
02:42of any organization.