ARLINGTON — The pure quality of Jack Leiter’s stuff — a slice of baseball jargon most simply used to describe a player’s ability to throw nasty pitches — may only be rivaled by Cy Young award candidate Jacob deGrom among Texas Rangers starters.
There still remains a disconnect, at times, between the natural talents and his ability to wield it. The root cause isn’t necessarily easily identifiable.
“That’s hard to answer,” Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said Wednesday afternoon when asked why Leiter’s weapons and command are not always in alignment.
It can create hard moments. Leiter lasted just 3⅓ innings in Wednesday’s 3-2 series finale loss vs. the New York Yankees, threw more balls (35) than strikes (33) and was chased from the game when he walked three batters in his final inning of work. Struggling left-hander Robert Garcia was tagged with the loss when he allowed a go-ahead home run to pinch hitter Paul Goldschmidt in the seventh inning.
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Leiter’s short start, though, forced the bullpen to work early and played a role in Garcia’s entrance into a high-leverage moment.
“You compete with what you have that day and that’s kind of your only choice,” Leiter said. “That was kind of clear to me early in the game. I would’ve loved to make them have to beat me instead of beat myself. The shapes were still good and the ball was coming out fine. I just didn’t have a feel for any of them really.”
The 25-year-old right-hander pitched three scoreless innings vs. one of baseball’s best offenses before the fourth spiraled out of hand despite the balls-and-strikes imbalance. He left leadoff hitter Trent Grisham on first base in the first after a leadoff single, tossed a perfect second and struck out American League MVP favorite Aaron Judge with his changeup to strand two runners on base in the third.
But, in the fourth, he walked Cody Bellinger and Jasson Dominguez on 10 combined pitches within the first three batters of the inning. Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe — Leiter’s friend high school teammate at Delbarton School (N.J.) — then slapped a 98 mph fastball into left field to score New York’s first run. Leiter walked Ryan McMahon on six pitches, only one of which was close to the strike zone, before Bochy pulled the plug and replaced him with left-hander Hoby Milner. Leiter got to two strikes on both Dominguez and McMahon before he walked them.
Dominguez scored on an errant throw from catcher Kyle Higashioka to give the Yankees a 2-1 lead before Milner induced back-to-back comebackers to limit the damage.
“He just lost his command there,” Bochy said. “With the day off tomorrow, we have a fresh ‘pen. Normally you have to be patient and let him get out of it, but with the guys that were good to go, we’re trying to keep the score [where it was].”
Leiter, whose first two seasons in the minor leagues were mired by command issues, has made strides in the last two seasons but is still imperfect. He has allowed three or fewer earned runs in eight consecutive appearances but has had to navigate high pitch counts early and drawn-out at bats have shortened the potential length of several starts.
He entered Wednesday with a .292 on base percentage in two-strike counts, the second-worst among all pitchers in baseball who’ve thrown at least 500 pitches in those scenarios this season. His 4.9 walks per nine innings are the third-most among those who’ve pitched at least 90 innings.
This is despite the fact that his high-octane arsenal — which includes a fastball that can touch triple digits and an improved changeup — has the potential to be lethal. His 109 Stuff+ rating trails only deGrom (110 Stuff+) on his team and only eight other pitchers leaguewide who’ve thrown 90 or more innings this year.
Of those nine with a better Stuff+ metric than Leiter, a list that includes Detroit’s Tarik Skubal, Philadelphia’s Zach Wheeler and Boston’s Garrett Crochet, none walk more than 3.11 batters per nine innings. Leiter’s 90 Location+ rating — a data point adjusted to specific counts that measures a pitcher’s ability to locate a ball — is tied for the worst among arms that meet his inning threshold.
“It just comes down to I’ve got to be better,” Leiter said. “I’ll figure out what was out of sync these next couple of days.”
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