When a college pitcher gets selected with a top pick, there’s an expectation that their major league success is right around the corner. After Jack Leiter’s dominant 2021 season at Vanderbilt and subsequent 2nd overall draft selection by the Texas Rangers in the 2021 draft, the fast track to the bigs seemed imminent. Most pitchers selected in the top five debut within two seasons of getting drafted, often either being a sure thing or one tweak away from being able to face major league-caliber hitters. Recently, that hasn’t been the case.
The recent trend of selecting highly touted college pitchers has generally not panned out yet, with exceptions coming from generational talent Paul Skenes in 2023 and Kumar Rocker, who didn’t sign in 2021. Leiter didn’t ascend like most of his ilk but had to prove his way to the big leagues.
Leiter’s path through the minor leagues was atypical for his class’s most projectable pitching prospect. In his first professional season in 2022, Leiter lost his fastball command, resulting in a high walk rate and ERA. The year 2023 saw more of the same, and Leiter found himself on the Development List twice. The time on the Development List was used to clean up his mechanics and work on his mental game. For a player who only saw success throughout his early career, being able to reframe and adjust to failures is essential. In many instances, a top prospect going onto the Development List can be often be the beginning of the end. For Leiter, it ended up being the beginning of a wake-up call.
Last season saw Leiter get an aggressive debut, but ultimately, he struggled to turn the corner in three separate stints. His 2024 minor league numbers were markedly better, but he overcorrected in his big league innings.
Leiter finally got above a 50% first-pitch strike rate in 2024 at AAA, the most basic step required for command. His stuff was still electric; the command improved just enough to entice hitters for more whiffs. A 50.9% F-Strike% would rank last among all MLB starters (min. 100 IP) by 4%, so this wasn’t ready for the big leagues.
His time with the Rangers in 2024 was about as bad as possible. The 8.83 ERA ranks 7th worst out of 1886 rookies with 30 IP between 2000 and 2024. As for what went wrong in the bigs, it’s almost everything.
Leiter threw his fastball 52% of the time and slider 29% of the time, making him primarily a two-pitch pitcher. Both pitches got absolutely mashed: the combined .519 xSLG was the 15th worst out of 248 fastball/slider combos (min. 500 total pitches). Leiter needed to throw more strikes even to have a chance in the majors, but his stuff was not ready. The 64% F-Strike% is ideal only when the pitches are worthy.
His fastball had an 8% increase in zone rate in the majors and garnered whiffs, but the results were not good when hitters put the ball in play. The slider underperformed its batted ball peripherals but was well below average in whiff rate, giving Leiter nothing out of his two primary pitches.
In 2025, Leiter needed significant changes to succeed, and there have been noticeable improvements after two starts. Modern pitching development has given pitchers more tools than ever to figure out their issues, and Leiter has taken advantage of that. Leiter reinvented himself after 35 MLB innings between new usage tendencies and pitch shapes.
Leiter has a 0.90 ERA through two starts with 10 strikeouts in 10 innings. The ERA won’t stick, obviously, but there’s already a solid foundation compared to how he started his MLB tenure in 2024 (7 ER in 3.2 IP).
He added two new pitches: the kick-change and a two-seam fastball. The kick-change is the hot, newly named pitch floating around baseball right now, but Leiter was one of the best candidates to add it to his arsenal. The kick-change “kicks” the spin axis, creating more drop and less horizontal movement for pitchers who struggle to turn over changeups (i.e., supinators). The kick-change has movement more akin to a splitter than a changeup, though with minimal differences.
Source: The Athletic
Leiter’s kick-change has 1 inch of vertical movement and 9 inches of horizontal movement, a decrease of 6 six inches in both directions. Impressively, it also gained a tick of velocity, sitting at 90 mph. While Leiter had reverse splits in 2024, the kick-change exists for dealing with left-handed hitters. Over time, left-handed hitters will likely plague Leiter more, and he needs more tools to attack them. The kick-change hasn’t taken over dominantly; it has yet to record a whiff but gives hitters something new to worry about that Leiter will continue to gain feel for as he logs more innings.
The two-seam fastball has 3 inches more drop and 8 inches more horizontal run than the four-seam. Multiple fastballs are also popular among arsenal design this year, and Leiter is capitalizing on both new trends. Giving a hitter multiple looks at high velocities makes squaring up a fastball significantly harder.
There’s one other important note on the arsenal: Leiter has added 1.5 mph on his fastball, along with an elite attack angle and slightly more extension. The fastball was good stuff-wise before but struggled, and now it’s potentially great.
With all of these new tricks, Leiter is deploying them in all sorts of new ways. Counter-intuitively, Leiter is now throwing his four-seam fastball less than ever, despite the velocity gains. Through two starts, his usage looks vastly different.
There are more fastballs overall, but they suppress hard contact more in a small sample (.252 xSLG). Leiter has also shown variable slider usage (12% usage in his first start vs. 44% usage in his second one), but it has been a more productive pitch than at any point last year.
As for the curveball, he is maintaining its usage while shuffling everything else around. The pitch suppressed contact last year as the lone bright spot for Leiter, but the pitch itself doesn’t grade out well and was located inconsistently.
Overall, Leiter is throwing more strikes in 2025, and hitters are making less contact in the zone. The new weapons are fueling Leiter to quite the turnaround from 2024. The whiffs will continue to grow as Leiter familiarizes himself with all of his pitches, but having two strong starts to the year will give him the confidence that 2024 did not afford him.
Even two or three years ago, I’m not sure if Leiter would make the changes he has, and therefore, might not even still be a potential high-upside starter. But he’s taken advantage of this year’s pitching trends and seemingly is ready for a full MLB workload for the rest of the year.
