The Texas Rangers gave star pitching prospect Jack Leiter the opportunity of his life.
They called him up from Triple-A, where he had been performing well in the early stages of the 2024 campaign, to start on Thursday against the Detroit Tigers.
The results of his first MLB outing were not satisfactory, though.
He was roughed up for seven runs (all earned) and couldn’t get out of the fourth inning.
“Jack Leiter’s final line in his MLB debut: 3.2 IP, 8 H, 7 ER, 3 BB, 3 K on 85 pitches,” Talkin’ Baseball tweeted.
Jack Leiter’s final line in his MLB debut:
3.2 IP, 8 H, 7 ER, 3 BB, 3 K on 85 pitches pic.twitter.com/S2IDByIaMG
Leiter conceded eight hits and walked three batters: the heavy traffic on the basepaths ended up affecting him.
While he didn’t give up any home runs, he did allow some hard contact and it wasn’t a good afternoon, overall.
Thankfully for Leiter, he is with a top organization that just won the World Series last year.
He has good coaches and some of his teammates in the rotation are experienced veterans, All-Stars, and even Cy Young award winners.
He has a strong support system to come back another time and perform much, much better than he did on Thursday.
Nobody knows if he will make another start (or more) or if he will be sent back to Triple-A, but this won’t be his last MLB start.
He has the talent, and requires patience.
Prior to this game, he had a 3.77 ERA in Triple-A with a really good 25/3 SO/BB ratio.
The tools are there for Leiter to be great one day: it just takes a bit of time to make the necessary adjustments in many cases.