Rangers' Kumar Rocker, double 1st-round draftee, gets 1st major league win

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Rangers' Kumar Rocker, double 1st-round draftee, gets 1st major league win

2025-04-18 11:46 Last Updated At：11:51

ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — Kumar Rocker, a first-round pick in both the 2021 and ’22 drafts, won for the first time in the major leagues Thursday night.

Rocker struck out a career-best eight in a career-best seven innings and the Texas Rangers beat the Los Angeles Angels 5-3 to complete a three-game sweep.

Rocker (1-2) threw a career-high 78 pitches and allowed three runs on five hits without a walk. The 25-year-old right-hander was drafted third overall by Texas in 2022, a year after concerns over a physical led to him going unsigned by the New York Mets as the 10th overall pick. He made his big league debut in September and was 0-2 last season.

“It feels great, It felt real good,” Rocker said. “And I’m happy it happened.”

Rocker opened the season in the starting rotation with multiple Texas starters on the injured list and was rocked for six runs in three innings at Cincinnati on March 31. In his most recent outing last Saturday at Seattle, he gave up four runs, three earned, in 3 1/3 innings.

The biggest difference Thursday night was overall command — throwing 58 strikes, allowing no walks – and specifically command of his slider.

“The biggest thing — we talk about it all the time — is location,” manager Bruce Bochy said. “He had really good location tonight.”

Rocker credited catcher Kyle Higashioka with calling a good game. “And I just kept them off balance,” he said.

Most critical was his strikeout of Mike Trout to end the fifth inning with a 4-3 lead leaving runners at first and second after the Angels scored twice in the inning. Rocker threw a 1-2 four-seam fastball, and Trout’s check swing was called a strike by first base umpire Lance Barrett.

It’s possible Rocker was pitching to hold his spot in the rotation. Jack Leiter, Rocker’s former Vanderbilt University teammate, should return from the injured list soon after being sidelined by a blister.

“It shows he can do it. He can do it again,” Bochy said. “That’s a great way to get your first win, seven innings. He’s got the stuff to be a really nice major league pitcher, be a dominant one.”

Now, Rocker has a statement performance to point to – coincidentally Rocker’s first seven-inning outing since his Vandy days.

“As I’m learning and as I’m going week to week, it’s hard to do it at this level,” Rocker said. “Just keep looking at older guys, watching them do their thing and trying to stay positive and trying to stay calm.”

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

Video captures Minneapolis immigration arrest in a city on edge after shooting of Renee Good

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Federal agents carrying out immigration arrests in Minnesota's Twin Cities region already shaken by the fatal shooting of a woman rammed the door of one home Sunday and pushed their way inside, part of what the Department of Homeland Security has called its largest enforcement operation ever.

In a dramatic scene similar to those playing out across Minneapolis, agents captured a man in the home just minutes after pepper spraying protesters outside who had confronted the heavily-armed federal agents. Along the residential street, protesters honked car horns, banged on drums and blew whistles in attempts to disrupt the operation.

Video of the clash showed some agents pushing back protesters while a distraught woman later emerged from the house with a document that federal agents presented to arrest the man. Signed by an immigration officer, the document — unlike a warrant signed by a judge — does not authorize forced entry into a private residence. A warrant signed by an immigration officer only authorizes arrest in a public area.

Immigrant advocacy groups have done extensive “know-your-rights” campaigns urging people not to open their doors unless agents have a court order signed by a judge.

But within minutes of ramming the door in a neighborhood filled with single-family homes, the handcuffed man was led away and soon gone.

More than 2,000 immigration arrests have been made in Minnesota since the enforcement operation began at the beginning of December, said Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.

The Twin Cities — the latest target in President Donald Trump’s immigration enforcement campaign — is bracing for what is next after 37-year-old Renee Good was shot and killed by an immigration officer Wednesday.

“We’re seeing a lot of immigration enforcement across Minneapolis and across the state, federal agents just swarming around our neighborhoods,” said Jason Chavez, a Minneapolis city councilmember. “They’ve definitely been out here.”

Chavez, the son of Mexican immigrants who represents an area with a growing immigrant population, said he is closely monitoring information from chat groups about where residents are seeing agents operating.

People holding whistles positioned themselves in freezing temperatures on street corners Sunday in the neighborhood where Good was killed, watching for any signs of federal agents.

More than 20,000 people have taken part in a variety of trainings to become “observers” of enforcement activities in Minnesota since the 2024 election, said Luis Argueta, a spokesperson for Unidos MN, a local human rights organization .

“It’s a role that people choose to take on voluntarily, because they choose to look out for their neighbors,” Argueta said.

The protests have been largely peaceful, but residents remained anxious. On Monday, Minneapolis public schools will start offering remote learning for the next month in response to concerns that children might feel unsafe venturing out while tensions remain high.

Many schools closed last week after Good’s shooting and the upheaval that followed.

While the enforcement activity continues, two of the state’s leading Democrats said that the investigation into Good's shooting death should not be overseen solely by the federal government.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and U.S. Sen. Tina Smith said in separate interviews Sunday that state authorities should be included in the investigation because the federal government has already made clear what it believes happened.

“How can we trust the federal government to do an objective, unbiased investigation, without prejudice, when at the beginning of that investigation they have already announced exactly what they saw — what they think happened," Smith said on ABC’s "This Week."

The Trump administration has defended the officer who shot Good in her car, saying he was protecting himself and fellow agents and that Good had “weaponized” her vehicle.

Todd Lyons, acting director of ICE, defended the officer on Fox News Channel’s “The Sunday Briefing.”

"That law enforcement officer had milliseconds, if not short time to make a decision to save his life and his other fellow agents,” he said.

Lyons also said the administration’s enforcement operations in Minnesota wouldn't be needed “if local jurisdictions worked with us to turn over these criminally illegal aliens once they are already considered a public safety threat by the locals.”

The killing of Good by an ICE officer and the shooting of two people by federal agents in Portland, Oregon, led to dozens of protests across the country over the weekend.

Thousands of people marched Saturday in Minneapolis, where Homeland Security called its deployment of immigration officers in the Twin Cities its biggest ever immigration enforcement operation.

Associated Press journalists Giovanna Dell’Orto in Minneapolis, Thomas Strong in Washington, Bill Barrow in Atlanta, and John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, contributed.