Rangers president of baseball operations Chris Young announced today that veteran outfielder/designated hitter Andrew McCutchen has made his club’s Opening Day roster (link via Shawn McFarland of the Dallas Morning News). McCutchen will earn a reported $1.25MM base salary and can double that amount via incentives. He and Ezequiel Duran will have spots on the team’s bench.
In the rotation, right-hander Kumar Rocker has won the fifth starter’s job over lefty Jacob Latz, who’ll head to the bullpen (link via Jeff Wilson of DLLS Sports). Non-roster veterans Cal Quantrill and Austin Gomber have been informed they did not make the team. McCutchen is not on the 40-man roster and will thus need to have his contract selected for the move to become official.
McCutchen signed midway through camp but quickly hit his way into the Rangers’ plans. He turned 39 last October but wasn’t showing his age during Cactus League play. It’s only 24 plate appearances, of course, but McCutchen went 8-for-18 with three doubles, a homer, six walks and five strikeouts in official spring games. He’ll give the Rangers a right-handed complement to lefty swinging designated hitter Joc Pederson, and McCutchen can still mix into the outfield corners on occasion as well. If Pederson’s anemic 2025 performance carries into the 2026 season — it’s carried over into spring training already — then McCutchen could eventually find himself in a larger role.
After all, McCutchen is coming off a season where he hit .239/.333/.367 in 551 plate appearances. It’s below-average production overall, but he was slightly above average in 2023-24. And given the depths of last year’s struggles from Pederson (.181/.285/.328), even slightly below-average offense would be a sizable improvement out of the DH slot.
Rocker, 26, had a rocky go of it in his first extended look in the majors last year. The former top-10 draft pick and top prospect pitched 64 1/3 innings but was knocked around for a 5.74 ERA with a below-average 19.5% strikeout rate and a solid 8% walk rate. Rocker pitched better in 19 minor league innings but also missed considerable time with a shoulder impingement.
This spring, Rockier has looked more formidable. He’s pitched 12 2/3 innings in Cactus League play, holding opponents to six runs (4.26 ERA) on 13 hits and three walks with 14 strikeouts. His velocity on his sinker is up about a half mile per hour, and the velocity on his cutter is up more than two miles per hour. Rocker has also been using his slider more than twice as often as he did in 2025, on a rate basis. Perhaps that’s more indicative of him working on the slider during camp than it is a sign of a new approach to his pitch selection in ’26, but the new trendlines are relatively intriguing.
Latz entered camp hoping to land the final rotation spot but will settle for a bullpen role to begin the year. He’s coming off a season in which he pitched 85 2/3 innings of 3.98 ERA ball, but Latz was torched for 14 earned runs in 15 1/3 innings this spring. The Rangers could keep the left-hander stretched out in a multi-inning role, which would allow him to be first up in the event of an injury elsewhere in the rotation.
For now, Rocker will break camp in the rotation alongside his college co-ace at Vanderbilt, Jack Leiter. The “Vandy Boys” will join Jacob deGrom, Nathan Eovaldi and trade acquisition MacKenzie Gore in a rotation that has the potential to be one of the best in baseball but also has plenty of injury risk with both Eovaldi and deGrom being in their late 30s and having lengthy injury histories in recent years.
