The Texas Rangers will have to solidify their Opening Day roster on March 26. There are very few questions heading into the 2026 season. However, one remains: who will be the Rangers’ fifth starter on the mound?
Pitchers from its Triple-A affiliate, the Round Rock Express, are all in contention to be the starter, from left-handed pitcher Jacob Latz to righties Kumar Rocker and Cal Quantrill.
“The fifth spot in the rotation is going to be fun to watch in spring training,” Texas Rangers manager Skip Schumaker said to Foul Territory on Feb. 22. “That will be a battle.”
Jacob Latz is an old familiar face to the Rangers and has been bouncing up and down the roster since 2021, appearing in as many as 46 games back in 2024.
Latz opened his spring training on Feb. 24 against the Arizona Diamondbacks, appearing in two innings of shutout baseball to put an exclamation point on his first bid for the final spot.
In an attempt to improve his case, Latz spent time this offseason improving his curveball, a pitch that, according to Baseball Savant, Latz only utilized 6.4% of the time last season.
“(The curveball) is going to be a focus for me this year — the consistency hasn’t been there,” Latz told Rangers Sports Network. “It pairs well off my fastball … and I love the way that it’s coming out of the hand right now.”
Latz’s main competition lies in Rangers’ 2022 first-rounder, Kumar Rocker. Rocker made his first start of the spring on Feb. 21 against the Chicago Cubs, throwing for two innings and allowing one run.
“It felt like we had a good group of guys out there,” Rocker told Rangers Sports Network. “It was just a good game all around.”
Rocker struggled with mixing pitches in 2025. Rocker’s Baseball Savant page shows he utilizes pitches averaging at least 90 miles per hour 71% of the time. The lack of speed differentiation resulted in Rocker yielding a 5.74 earned run average for the Rangers in 2025. To combat this, Rocker looks to increase his changeup usage from 6.1% last year.
“It comes at moments. … I’ve got to own that pitch this year, and I need to keep throwing it.” Rocker told Rangers Sports Network.
Outside of the dueling former Rangers, Quantrill looks to make a late push for the rotation. Quantrill was signed to the Express in late January with a spring training invite to compete for a spot with the Rangers in March.
Quantrill has appeared in two games this spring, pitching for four innings. Quantrill will most likely not get another chance on the mound before the season starts due to playing in the World Baseball Classic for Team Canada, but Schumaker believes that he will continue to contend for the roster while away.
“He’s a pro,” Schumaker told Sports Illustrated. “So he’s the type of pitcher you don’t really worry about too much because he has a plan to attack and try to still make a roster.”
