ARLINGTON -- Jack Leiter was behind from the start.
While he opened Tuesday night’s matchup with the Royals by getting Jonathan India to ground out, Kansas City hitters pounced immediately afterward. The rest of the first inning included a Bobby Witt Jr. double, a Maikel Garcia RBI single and a Salvador Perez home run.
While Leiter had a pair of quick innings in the second and third, Witt later added a homer of his own, while Perez collected an RBI double and another homer for four RBIs on the night.
Leiter allowed a season-high-tying six earned runs and eight hits in 5 2/3 innings in the Rangers’ 6-1 loss to the Royals at Globe Life Field. He yielded three home runs, a single-game career high. It’s the most homers any Texas pitcher has given up this year and the most since Cody Bradford permitted three on Sept 11, 2024, at Arizona.
“I think it’s just about making pitches, when you have to make pitches,” Leiter said. “The big counts, the guys in the lineup that could hurt you, there's a lot of situations during a game where you got to make the pitch, and I just didn't do it. There’s not really one exact thing, but the last couple games -- results wise -- didn't go my way, and I'm going to figure it out and be better for the long run.”
Over his last six starts entering the day, Leiter had posted a 3.03 ERA, .191 batting average against (22-for-115) and a 1.19 WHIP, allowing his season ERA to dip from 5.09 to 3.88. Over that span, he had worked at least five innings and allowed three runs or fewer.
The heart of the Royals’ order made plenty of hard contact against Leiter, including four of the five hardest hit balls in the game, all of which had exit velocities of at least 108 mph.
“He made some mistakes in the heart of the plate,” said manager Bruce Bochy. “The two-run homer there in the first inning, he didn't get that fastball where he wanted, it was down the middle. The fastball is fine, as long as you do locate it, and when that doesn't happen, then you're probably going to give up damage. That's what happened to him tonight. When you see the slug against him, it’s against mistakes.”
Young pitchers are allowed starts where they aren’t at their best. Everybody is truthfully allowed those days. But the Rangers can’t really afford these days from the rotation at the moment. After all, they’ve thrown bullpen games in two of the last eight days, with another pending on Thursday.
With Nathan Eovaldi continuing to work his way back from a triceps injury and Tyler Mahle joining him on the injured list over the weekend, the Rangers are now working with four starting pitchers for the time being: Leiter, Kumar Rocker, Jacob deGrom and Patrick Corbin.
Jon Gray (wrist fracture) and Cody Bradford (elbow soreness) both opened the season on the injured list.
Corbin -- who has been on the injured list only twice since 2015 -- and deGrom are the only two starting pitchers to not spend any time on the injured list to this point in the season.
Rangers president of baseball operations Chris Young acknowledged on Sunday that they were a bit thin at the moment. But he didn’t seem overly concerned about the situation in the short or long term.
“We are close to having Evo back,” Young said. “When we get Evo back, that's a pretty solid rotation. Maybe in the next five, seven days [we’re strapped], yes, but I think we’re pretty close here. We're going to get Jon Gray and Cody Bradford back soon. We’re close to being in a pretty good spot. But I don't take for granted that over the next week to 10 days, we've got some challenges.”