Highly touted Rangers pitching prospect Jack Leiter will make his home debut Tuesday night as Texas tries to snap a season-worst, four-game losing streak when it opposes the Cleveland Guardians in Arlington, Texas.
It will be the third major league start for the 24-year-old right-hander who was the second overall pick of the 2021 draft out of Vanderbilt. Leiter will be opposed by right-hander Ben Lively (1-2, 2.63 ERA), who will be making his first career appearance against Texas.
Leiter (0-0, 12.91 ERA) made his big-league appearance on April 18 in a 9-7 win at Detroit when he allowed seven runs on eight hits in 3 2/3 innings. He walked three and struck out three.
His second start came as the 27th man in the second game of a doubleheader at Oakland on Wednesday. Leiter yielded six runs (four earned), including long two-run homers by Shea Langeliers and Tyler Soderstrom, over four innings in a wild 12-11 Rangers victory.
Leiter has been much more successful this season at Triple-A Round Rock, where he was 1-1 with a 2.84 ERA in five games (four starts), striking out 37 batters in 25 1/3 innings.
"He just has to go out there and throw the ball the way he's been throwing it at Triple-A," Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said. "It's not easy doing what he's doing. I'm talking about coming up here for one day. He's not around the club and he goes back. ... Hopefully this one he'll be even more comfortable and finally get in a situation where he's with us and just making consistent starts."
Texas has been hit hard by injuries to its starting staff with Nathan Eovaldi (right groin strain) and Dane Dunning (right rotator cuff strain) just the latest to go on the injured list over the past 10 days.
The Rangers did get an excellent start on Monday from Michael Lorenzen, who allowed just one hit over seven shutout innings during a series-opening, 7-0 loss to the Guardians. However, Texas continued to struggle on offense, finishing with just four hits. The Rangers have scored a total of six runs during their four-game skid.
"That's all you can ask from your starter," Bochy said of Lorenzen. "Right now we're having a tough time getting runs across the board. We need somebody to come through here.
"We're just going through a little tough rut right now offensively. We'll come out of this. We're too good not to come out of it."
Cleveland, which lost three in a row against the host Chicago White Sox last week, bounced back to take the finale of that set 7-0 on Sunday before prevailing by the same score on Monday in Texas.
Starter Tanner Bibee allowed three hits over 5 1/3 innings and four relievers combined to permit only one hit the rest of the way for the Guardians.
Jose Ramirez led the Cleveland offense with a pair of two-run singles as he increased his American League-leading RBI total to 37. He also walked twice and stole two bases.
"He's pretty fun to watch," Cleveland manager Stephen Vogt said. "Jose is remarkable. Nothing he does surprises me. ... He plays to win."
Ramirez, a five-time All-Star, finished in the AL's top 10 in RBIs four times in the previous six seasons.
--Field Level Media
Copyright 2024 STATS LLC and Associated Press. Any commercial use or distribution without the express written consent of STATS LLC and Associated Press is strictly prohibited.