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The K&C Masterpiece reviewed their top observations and re-evaluations for the Texas Rangers following the first full month of the season. They discussed Jacob deGrom's health, Corey Seager’s ongoing offensive slump, the emergence of Kumar Rocker, Josh Jung’s breakout, the bullpen and more.

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00:00we are going to talk about the texas rangers so they finished all of april so like the first
00:05full month of the season for them observations re-evaluations and questions after the first
00:13full month of the season and i would like to start if you don't mind i dare you to start
00:20here's an observation i am no longer nervous and just enjoy watching degrom pitch pretty much all
00:29of last season thing right i was like yeah it's good it's good but like when he gets hurt and
00:36i
00:36hate thinking that and i know you could say that about any player but somebody with that kind of
00:40injury history i think i'm just now to the point where he's gonna pitch i'm like hell yeah and not
00:46just like hope for the best yeah and now that being said he's he's not zero run degrom for sure
00:56but kevin the thing that i learned last year i had so much fun watching the shapes of pitches
01:02last year not just for him but patrick corbin uh if all the all these dudes and when you say
01:08shapes
01:09you're like what do you mean some people might be like what do you mean by shapes of pitches
01:12when it comes out of their hand is it a fastball it's a straight line does it curve in does
01:17it curve
01:17out how the ball moves and quite honestly degrom with a fastball and a slider can eat you alive for
01:24an entire day uh and then if he throws another pitch in that you're like where the hell did that
01:28come from right but he is because of the sharpness of his pitches one of the most aesthetically
01:36pleasing pitchers to watch and there's a dominance there's no there's a competitive fire that like
01:41simmers in him all the time but you don't see a like you know all the time from that dude
01:48but that
01:49competitive fire just makes you as a as a viewer just sit there and simmer with him because you
01:54know the dude's cooking at a high level so yeah dude that's a really it's a really great observation
01:59are you interested at all in a non sequitur i am not quite sure what it means i i'm just
02:07gonna go
02:08sort of off topic for just a second i made the mistake of looking up degrom stats because i wanted
02:14to see his whip his whip it was sub one last year it's sub one again so far this year
02:19and then i got
02:20caught up looking at his 2021 season which was on pace to be one of the greatest seasons in the
02:25history
02:25of pitching and so i was going to look up who has the greatest single season war ever for a
02:30pitcher
02:31that was a mistake it was pud galvin in 1884 who beat out tim keith from 1883 and then they're
02:42both
02:43just ahead of old hoss radborn also from 1884 hoss radborn was one of the most amazing his story
02:51is pretty incredible the pud guy yeah pud galvin but the keith guy he's on righteous gemstones right
02:56that's the different that's a different keith keith yes that's a different person but yeah there's my
03:02non sequitur for you when pud galvin start started his career in 1875 he had an era of 1.16
03:12all right
03:12we need to do a deeper dive on pud yeah do you remember that song my name is pud pud
03:20pud pud pud my
03:22name is mud oh okay next statement dude he looks like babe ruth with a mustache i kind of feel
03:28like
03:28everybody back then used to look like that yeah yeah definitely because of the color of the uh the
03:33photos yeah yeah look at look at that doesn't he kind of yeah he also looks like he could be
03:38teddy
03:38roosevelt yeah yes he does put him on a horse all right why let teddy roosevelt very well known
03:46outdoorsman loved horses actually kevin could teddy roosevelt ride a horse he was a little heavier
03:52yeah did he meet the weight requirement yeah yeah because horses were tougher back i think he just had
03:56a bigger horse i think just like the rest of society horses have gotten soft they're like oh my
04:01gosh this grass is so easy to get to next statement wyatt langford and cory seager need
04:07to wake the f up i saw a really stupid comment on our twitter yesterday and i wanted to spotlight
04:13that comment but i muted that person also because they're an idiot so we were having critiques of
04:19cory seager so far and that guy responded is like oh sounds like these guys going to get rid of
04:26him not even yeah i saw that i was like yeah you nimrod that's what we said we said he's
04:31playing
04:31poorly and you've seen the heights of cory seager which are higher than anybody else offensively on
04:36this team so i would love for him to get it together and then we got the news earlier today
04:41that wyatt langford it sure sounds like he's hit a setback in his simulated game and he felt more
04:47tightness in his forearm who knows what's going to happen with that but it's been a rough start
04:53compared to where they usually are for those two i think that's kevin and i think we were we had
05:00a lot
05:01of ifs before the season regarding those guys uh being that level if they're this you know and the
05:09whole lineup had a lot of ifs i think my thing that the observation that i have is we are
05:15not a talented
05:16team it's that's not a hot take in my opinion yeah you're not a talented hitting roster uh that is
05:27at the moment the the the toughest thing is looking at this roster and saying am i just hoping they're
05:37all good dudes there's good dudes on this roster but am i just hoping that they play at their best
05:42and we get the best out of it and that's what you're doing though the reality is when it comes
05:48to being a talented power hitting roster or doubles hitting roster this isn't it and that's that's why
05:56when you look at somebody like cory seager you know it's crazy too he's only missed one game so far
06:02so he's played 30 of the 31 games but even with that he's on pace for the lowest war he's
06:09had since
06:102020 you know why because 2020 was the year we only had 60 games so other than that you have
06:16to
06:16go back to 2018 where he missed most of the season right now he's on pace for his lowest ops
06:21of his
06:22entire career lowest on base percentage of his career lowest batting average by a lot of his career
06:28he has gotten off to a horrid start but he's been out there like there's always which was what we
06:34asked yeah because we thought if he was out there that he'd be more effective exactly it's kind of like
06:38last year's sad mike trout season where he played most of the year and he just wasn't that good i
06:44never would have envisioned a scenario in which cory seager plays most of the year and he's just not
06:50that good now still plenty of time to turn it around but him and wyatt you got to get something
06:55going
06:55um can i add another one please
07:00kamar rocker is a good fourth pitcher
07:03might even be a good third pitcher
07:06right now he's a good fourth pitcher and i don't i think you've said this a couple times some of
07:12his
07:12outings you look at the stats at the end of it and you're like well maybe those stats don't tell
07:17the
07:17complete story i think more him than any of our other starters and most of the time the stats might
07:22look like a bad story but then you look at him you're like actually that turns out okay yeah
07:26sometimes it's like man he got out of the game before it could turn bad right but listen to this
07:32six innings pitch six innings pitch four and two thirds five innings five innings
07:37for a fifth pitcher doing all right only give it up a couple runs there yeah and obviously i think
07:44it's
07:44the pittsburgh game right that evan carter really bailed you out yes but still yeah no i i'm
07:51i here's what i wanted from kamar rocker this year not go out there and wow me it is kind
07:56of
07:56starting to get time for you need to be a legitimate pitcher in major league baseball
08:01but i wasn't saying go out there wow me i was saying go out there every day or every five
08:06days
08:06and pitch and give yourself a chance and give the team a chance so far i feel like he has
08:12so i'll take
08:14i'll take what kamar rocker has given me so far this season and that's my observation on him
08:19okay i like that by the way weird coincidence i'm actually reading the theodore roosevelt
08:24biography horseback in the morning right now by david mccullough onward in your face alec
08:29all right question go ahead and give me cut number seven will you please because this next one
08:36will include audio
08:39want to fly ball to left here's a well hit ball deep right center field gel off going back on
08:44this
08:45it carries well and it's into the bullpen home run for josh young
08:50the jungle cat bites in 24 games in april josh young 17 rbis hit 381 with an ops of 1
09:00.103
09:01is this josh young's real breakout season
09:09because it felt like 23 was it you know what no i'm not gonna say that okay because here's what
09:15i
09:15need to see him at this level when everybody else is too right now i feel like he is at
09:21this level
09:22because he he is playing at a certain level that he realizes they need it but whenever everybody else
09:29is that he doesn't they don't need it where is he and so i need that dude to be playing
09:34at this
09:34level when the rest of the group is playing at this level too so whenever i see that kevin that's
09:40when
09:40i will claim this for you okay i appreciate this okay it's recognition of what josh young's doing
09:46and what he's doing is as good as it gets but when everything sometimes you kind of get in your
09:54own
09:55head as the other people are having success and maybe you're not how does he respond to that that's
10:01what i want to see from him evan carter still can't hit lefties but he's healthy in the prototypical
10:08defensive center fielder do you know what he's hitting against lefties this year
10:15um 121 zero what oh he hasn't had any at bats obviously false okay he is 0 for 18
10:24with two walks and eight strikeouts okay as an on base percentage of 100 he needs more he needs
10:32these at bats though right like you're right they don't have any choices but to do it because of
10:37white langford's injury but yes he needs these but at some point he's got to turn a corner especially
10:44when you watch him out there in center field he continues to make really extreme plays look rather
10:50routine at times he's so fast he's a prototypical defensive center fielder and i love that even if
10:58he still can't hit left handers statement is he a i'm sorry you say defensive is he just a defensive
11:06center fielder against righties or is he a threat against righties in your opinion i think that's what
11:12we should probably at some point really take a a breakdown on what we consider a like at the plate
11:19he has potential he still has the potential and i firmly believe this to be a threat against
11:24right handers yeah and so that's we're not there yet okay all right now statement you tell me if you
11:30disagree well the bullpen's era is really good the lack of high velocity pitchers and swing and miss
11:36stuff is going to catch up to the rangers bullpen soon uh i think that and just overuse early here
11:44in
11:44the season because they have to go to them so frequently yeah this happened last year kevin
11:50last year the the starting pitching started to catch up in the bats started giving you some more
11:56runs later in the season not enough more runs but some more runs and the bullpen was like we're
12:02exhausted guys and so i think this is very similar to the way things happened last year where you were
12:06like man i really didn't expect the bullpen to be this this season but yeah i do think the like
12:13you
12:13need dudes that walk in there and mason miller the hell out of an inning and you have not a
12:18single
12:18one of them but you have some dudes that can trick you uh into getting outs now would you like
12:24another
12:25non sequitur this one is gonna go in a wild direction all right yeah oh this is i don't like
12:35it
12:35cory he said a wild direction it's not about hockey okay that's fair okay but this is definitely not
12:40middle of the earth right non sequitur the middle of the earth line that's the non-equator okay if
12:48you were looking for that non-equator for the three two one nimrod is a hunter kevin i will not
12:54stop
12:54this fight against misinformation and slander you keep spreading about the name nimrod so i decided to
13:00investigate you don't want to get things wrong now it is true that nimrod started out with that if you
13:07look in the marion webster dictionary the it is a slang for a jerk or an idiot however that's not
13:16the kind of research we stop at on the knc masterpiece so we took it a little further we took
13:23it to
13:23gemini in night no i did not in 1948 daffy duck referred to elmer fudd as my little nimrod
13:33and so that was the first kind of usage or one of the first usages in popular culture however it's
13:39on gemini by the way and this is i'm not using gem i am this is where it's gonna get
13:45weird bugs was
13:47using the name ironically though yes then we go to reddit and the first recorded unambiguous non-hunter
13:55linked use of the word nimrod as an insult is found in the 1981 canadian thriller movie happy birthday to
14:02me where one character yells hey that nimrod owes me 20 bucks the reason why i wanted to bring that
14:08up
14:08is i have seen happy birthday to me i have watched it in the last year or so it's not
14:15great but once
14:16again the ending to that movie is wild so if you like horror movies and you're not totally concerned
14:24about how good they actually are go watch the 1981 movie happy birthday to me i would slot it below
14:30sleepaway camp but still if you do not value your time like i don't worth your time the ancient times
14:38to the 1930s kevin it was the mighty hunter slash king in the biblical heroic ladder in literal senses
14:45from the 1940s to the 1980s sarcastic hunter pop culture transitionary and then from the 1990s to now
14:53it's been considered fool slash idiot slang informal so there we go on the uh the the i like it
15:00the table
15:00of content context is what i'm going to call that and then one more back to the rangers have we
15:07all
15:07vastly overrated how good the catchers would be now evan grant has pushed back against this idea this
15:15morning so danny jansen in april had an ops of 627 but mr grant who's also a great follow for
15:22rangers information has pointed out that danny jansen is traditionally a terrible april hitter do
15:29you know his ops for his career in march and april is 595 this is the best ops that he's
15:37had in the
15:37month of april for any season in which he's played at least 10 games career first half ops 687 second
15:44half 783 so he's gonna get better which begs the question why not just play higgy in the first half
15:49and then go to jansen in the second half of games no of the season okay but what about games
15:56uh you
15:57know what i'll tell you what you watch all of happy birthday to me i will discuss that you're a
16:01four and a
16:01half inning catcher is what i would tell each one of them that would be really confusing but yeah if
16:08it
16:08worked to be awesome oh for sure like many i'd be like look at skip where did he get this
16:13idea yeah
16:13he's a genius that in the the ninth at bottom of the ninth all the time gatorade yes or the
16:20time
16:20that you said lamar odom was a trojan horse
16:22you
16:22you
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