'I just need to be better': Guards get to Leiter after hitless opening innings

ARLINGTON -- The Rangers’ quest to get back to .500 will have to wait another few days.

For three innings on Saturday night, it looked like the Rangers and Guardians were in for an old fashioned pitchers' duel between Jack Leiter and Tanner Bibee. Through three, Leiter had allowed just one walk and no hits. Bibee faced the minimum, as Corey Seager's first-inning single was wiped out with a Josh Jung double-play ball.

Then, the two took diverging paths. Bibee tossed eight scoreless innings, limiting the Rangers to just three singles, while the Guardians knocked Leiter around for five runs in his final 1 2/3 innings. Texas unceremoniously fell, 6-0.

“I think, even early, I was kind of fighting myself,” Leiter said. “I was just out of sync for whatever reason. It kind of correlated to the execution of my pitches. Everything was up -- changeup, sliders. There were some good curveballs early in the counts, but for the most part, when I had to put guys away when I was ahead, I didn't execute. And that ran up the pitch count, caused me to work harder, and eventually they got to me.”

“Fighting himself” seemed to be the story of the day.

Even as he appeared to cruise through three innings, Leiter admitted his own frustration with uncompetitive pitches and three-ball counts that continued to drive up his pitch count. The five runs he allowed was tied for his most this season and the four runs in the fifth were tied for the most in a single inning.

“The cutter was really effective early on, and then it felt like they started to ambush it almost the second and third time around,” said manager Skip Schumaker. “The changeup wasn't real effective. I think the fastball/cutter again was going so well that we just kind of kept leaning on it, and they started ambushing it pretty early on in the counts. It happened pretty quick for him in that fifth inning.”

And the fifth inning has become something of a problem for Leiter this season as well. It’s been his most detrimental frame this year, with 15 of his 38 runs permitted (39.5%) having come in the fifth.

As to why, Leiter pointed to the execution of his secondary pitches, which is something he is able to get away with more the first time through the order. On days like Saturday, against teams like the Guardians, that falls apart rather quickly.

“He definitely has the pitches to mix it up a little bit differently,” Schumaker said. “Maybe we're going at this with the same attack plan, because it was successful the first time through, and maybe he's getting into rhythms and patterns. That's something we definitely have to take a look at and help him through, because we need to get him through at least the fifth inning. I think that's the main thing, is to see if there's any patterns that the other team is adjusting to the second and third time around, and try to mix it up even more.”

Leiter hasn’t been perfect this season, but a 4.69 ERA isn’t even all that damning to this point in the season. That’ll play for most teams at the back end of the rotation. But with the Rangers’ roller coaster of an offense, the starting pitching -- fair or unfair -- has been burdened with pressure to be as close to perfect as possible every time out.

Leiter can’t be perfect, no pitcher will be. But his struggles have never come down to talent. It’s been consistency and execution.

“[Cleveland] is a scrappy lineup, it's tough, but I just need to be better,” Leiter said. “I gotta get in the lab with [pitching coach Jordan] Tiegs, and get to work, and see ways that I can improve and apply them quickly before moving on to the next one.

“I think even in the good starts, there's times where we, as starters, want to be better, and the execution is maybe not quite as good as you'd like. I think early in the game, like I said, the first three innings, I think there was a lot of poor execution. I think whether that's something mechanically a little out of sync or just a mentality, a mindset … whatever it is, I need to fix it and get back to work.”