[ad_1]
IT’S WEIRDLY INSTRUCTIVE to watch how baseball scouts watch baseball players. Everything they do is intended to hide what they’re actually doing, which has the unintended effect of making even their most subtle movements glaringly obvious. They also have another endearing quirk: They all know one another but don’t want anyone to know why they’re here, which is a particularly difficult feat when it’s an independent Frontier League game on a 95-degree Friday night, the air wet enough to drink, and Kumar Rocker is pitching in Troy, New York, for the Tri-City ValleyCats. The scouts, more than a dozen of them, are here for just one reason.
Rocker is accustomed to the attention. For a second consecutive year, the former Vanderbilt star has earned an honor nobody seeks more than once: the most famous player in the MLB first-year player draft. Standing 6-foot-5 at 245 pounds, he is a right-hander with a big-league-ready arsenal: a 98 mph fastball, a wipeout slider and a hard curveball that buckles the knees of anyone looking for either of the other two. His motion is smooth and easy, almost nonchalant, and the ball leaves his hand from a three-quarter arm slot with a fluidity that gives the velocity an element of surprise, not an easy feat when it’s emanating from the body of a defensive end.
The scout’s job, then, would seem to be easy. Sturdy guy with great stuff, a repeatable delivery and a history of competing at the highest amateur level. So, what’s the catch? “He’s a big leaguer pitching in indy ball right now,” says Pete Incaviglia, the ValleyCats manager who played 12 years in the majors. “If he’s not a top-five pick in the draft, I don’t know who is.”
But among the many peculiar distinctions Rocker has earned over the past few years, this might be the most important: He has managed to be both overexposed and mysterious.
Varying amounts of fame have attached to Rocker since he was a 10-year-old roaming the world of travel baseball, where parents who were…
[ad_2]
Source : espn
