Right-handed Rangers pitching prospect Alejandro Rosario is likely to miss the 2025 season due to an elbow injury, president of baseball operations Chris Young told reporters (including Kennedi Landry of MLB.com). Rosario will require surgery, though Young was reluctant to offer any concrete details.
“It’s likely UCL,” Young said, as relayed by Landry. “I don’t want to officially say, but yeah, it’s elbow and will probably require Tommy John.”
The 23-year-old was a fifth-round pick by the Rangers in the 2023 draft. It’s a brutal blow for the righty, who was nothing short of sensational in his first season as a pro in 2024. He split the year between Single-A and High-A, pitching to a sterling 2.24 ERA overall with 88 1/3 innings of work. He struck out an incredible 36.9% of opponents faced in total last year while walking just 3.7% of batters. It was a massive leap forward for a player who never posted an ERA below 5.00 during his collegiate career.
Unfortunately, that incredible breakout will be put on hold for the 2025 campaign. While specifics of what exact procedure Rosario will undergo have not yet been made public, even an internal brace procedure comes with about a year of rehab time, with full Tommy John requiring a longer rehab that would likely stretch into the 2026 season. Rosario appeared on track to either start 2025 at Double-A or earn a promotion to the level early in the campaign, but those plans will have to be scuttled for the year. That seems likely to delay his big league debut until 2027 at the earliest, surely a disappointing development for both the Rangers and the righty himself.
Fortunately for Texas, they’re hardly short on starting pitching options for the 2025 campaign. Nathan Eovaldi, Jacob deGrom, Jon Gray, Tyler Mahle, and Cody Bradford currently project as the club’s starting five on Opening Day, with Dane Dunning also on the roster as a potential swing man. That roster is supplemented by a handful of young prospects, including former first-round picks Kumar Rocker and Jack Leiter. Both of them made their big league debuts in 2024; Leiter struggled through 35 2/3 innings of work with an 8.83 ERA, though he did pitch to a 3.51 ERA in 77 innings of work at the Triple-A level. That’s a particularly impressive figure given the inflated offensive environment of the Pacific Coast League and his excellent 33.3% strikeout rate.
Rocker, meanwhile, showed out in a three-start cup of coffee late in the year with a 3.86 ERA and 3.68 FIP. He was even better in the minors, with just three earned runs allowed across seven starts between the Double- and Triple-A levels last year after returning from Tommy John surgery earlier in the year. The presence of Leiter and Rocker, as well as other youngsters like Emiliano Teodo, should help the Rangers to weather Rosario’s delayed big league timeline even as Gray and Mahle head for free agency after the 2025 season.
