Top NYY Could-Have-Beens: Al Leiter

The Leiter family is becoming one of the noble houses of baseball in the modern era, with Mark Leiter Jr.

in the Yankee bullpen for now, and Jack trying to make good on his prospect hype down in Texas.

A generation before, five boys in Toms River, NJ put the Leiter name on the baseball board, but Al Leiter ended up the best of the quintet.

A two-time World Series champion and author of a no-hitter, Leiters career was bookended by time with the Yankees , but we missed out on the primes of one of the most reliable arms of the 90s.

Years in Yankees Organization : 1987-89, 2005 How They Left : Traded to the Toronto Blue Jays in April 1989 Career MLB Yankees Statistics : 38 games, 32 GS, 11-13, 169 IP, 5.17 ERA (80 ERA+), 155 K, 0.4 rWAR, 1.8 fWAR Career MLB Statistics : 19 seasons, 419 games, 382 GS, 162-132, 2,391 IP, 3.80 ERA (112 ERA+), 1,974 K, 42.5 rWAR, 36.5 fWAR It must feel pretty powerful to strike out 32 batters in a single game.

As a New Jersey high school senior, Leiter pitched all 13 innings of a game called off by rain, fanning almost three dozen opponents.

That game, coming off back-to-back no hitters, solidified Leiter as one of the top prep arms in the country.

Als older brother Mark had been taken in the fourth round of the 1983 MLB Draft , and one wonders how much brotherly competition or sibling rivalry was driven by Als second-round selection the year after.

A Wilson All-American coming out of high school, Leiter was drafted by the Yankees and would be joined by his brother Mark in the system after the elder bro was released by the Orioles in 1988.

In his first taste of pro ball in the NY-Penn League after signing Leiter was shown a cut fastball by none other than Ron Guidry, a biting pitch that would be the leftys bread and butter for his entire career.

It was never as hammering a pitch as something youd get from Mariano Rivera or Roy Halladay, but the cutter helped Leiter keep the ball in the yard for 19 MLB seasons.

It would take until September 1987 for Leiter to get the call to the majors, a cup of coffee where he quite frankly dazzled.

Six consecutive strikeouts to open your MLB career is about as good as any 21-year-old can hope for.

He only threw 22.2 innings in that September call-up, and the 6.35 ERA would have made analysts of the day furrow their brows.

Leiter would struggle with walks for all of his twenties, but 28 strikeouts in those 22.2 IP has to count for something.

Indeed, the Yankees reportedly turned down several offers for Leiter during that offseason per the 1988 Yankees Yearbook.

Leiters overall showing was enough for Baseball America to rank him the second-best prospect in New Yorks system prior to 88, trailing only Hensley Meulens.

While initially assigned to Triple-A Columbus to open 1988, Leiter pitched just four games before being sent back to the majors, where the Yankees were optimistic after seeing him win the James P.

Dawson Award as the most outstanding rookie in spring training.

While he battled a trio of injuries all season, that ERA began to tick down.

At 22, Leiter was still awfully young to be in a major league rotation, and while the promise was showing, the consistency and health would hamper what could have been a very quick rise into MLBs elite.

The Yankees didnt give him much help though, giving up on the 23-year-old Leiter in April 1989, two weeks after manager Dallas Green hung him out to dry.

As our own Mark Matt Ferenchick recounts , Green let Leiter throw 163 pitches, in the damp evening of April 14th with 10 strikeouts against 9 walks.

I do think that modern MLB philosophy is too tied to pitch count limits, but that kind of old-school machismo nonsense is just as harmful.

By that point the writing was on the wall; Leiter didnt really have a future in the Bronx.

On April 30th, he was sent north to Toronto in exchange for former All-Star Jesse Barfield.

I hope to go out and win 20 games and have a great career and it will be just another instance of where the Yankees gave up on a young guy.

- Al Leiter To be fair, this ended up being a pretty shrewd deal, even as Al would go on to have more success in his thirties.

The Yankees themselves scuffled due to other organizational issues, but Barfield put up 9.3 fWAR over three-plus seasons in the Bronx, even including a disastrous final season in 1992.

Over that same term, Leiter would continue to struggle with injuries while a Blue Jay, throwing just 15 innings due to multiple shoulder surgeries before finally establishing himself in the 1993 campaign.

Splitting time between the rotation and bullpen, Leiter made a dozen starts for the defending World Series champions, and while he was only worth a win and a half less by fWAR the now-27 year-old was finally proving that he could be relied on for a full season.

More importantly, Al was a key part of the 93 World Series, credited with the win in Game 1 and notching a double in a crazy, 15-14 Game 4.

Leiter would of course be overshadowed by Joe Carter and how that series ended, but the breakout campaign ended with a ring.

It wouldnt be the first time the left-hander came up big in a title chase.

Few franchises in history have had such World Series hangovers like the Jays immediately following their back-to-back championships funny enough, Leiters next team is probably atop that list.

Toronto won 55 games in the strike-shortened 1994 season, and then 56 in the 144-game slate for 95, even as Leiter was becoming something like Old Faithful.

His walk problems would persist, but that cutter kept his home run totals low, leading to seasons with pretty drastic splits between ERA and FIP.

Leiter actually led all of baseball in walks ahead of his free agency, but the Florida Marlins were looking to make some splashes in their fourth year of existence.

Joining a strong rotation headlined by Kevin Brown, Leiter would author perhaps the biggest single game in franchise history to that point, no-hitting the Rockies on a hot night in May 1996: An All-Star for the first time, Leiter received down-ballot Cy Young votes while Brown finished second in the voting himself.

Edgar Renteria would be the NL Rookie of the Year runner-up, and two other Marlins would get MVP votes.

The signs that this could be a competitive team were starting to show.

Sharing a division with the Team of the 90s meant that the Marlins would always be looking up at Atlanta, but a Wild Card berth in 1997 would lead to one of the most surprising World Series runs in history.

Leiter struggled in Game 3 against Cleveland, lasting just 4.2 innings in a slugfest that Florida would end up winning 14-11.

He was then called upon to make the biggest start of his career, entrusted with Game 7 at home: Six innings pitched, two runs allowed, seven strikeouts, and while Leiter didnt qualify for the win, he did everything he could in front of 67,000 (!) fans to deliver the franchises first title.

It would eventually take 11 innings to do so, with Renteria walking it off.

As I said above, the Jays went into a deep, deep post-World Series funk, but even they werent as bad as the intentional dismantling of the Marlins championship roster.

Bobby Bonilla, Moises Alou, Gary Sheffield, Charles Johnson, Brown, and Leiter were all dealt away in a matter of months following the Miami parade, a vivisection that in many ways killed South Floridas passion for baseball at the highest level.

The deliberate mismanagement of the Marlins as a franchise could take up its own book, but for now, I cant say anything more than how sorry I feel for the kids in that crowd of 67,000.

The Marlins had it all in front of them, and chose to rip it up instead .

They lost 108 games the year after winning it all.

Dealt to the Mets , Leiter began what would be the most successful five-year run of his career, putting up 20 fWAR with a 3.36 ERA, including Cy Young votes in 1998, the season he put up his best ERA (2.47) and FIP (3.15).

The next year, he was once again called upon in the biggest possible way, as the Mets and Reds squared off in a single-game tiebreaker, with the possibility of snapping the Mets 11-year postseason drought on the line.

Undeterred by the road assignment in Cincinnati, Leiter blanked the Reds with a two-hit masterpiece.

The Mets moved on to the NLDS, where they dispatched the Diamondbacks before the dynastic Braves cut short their World Series bid in the NLCS.

Leiter took a hard-luck loss in Game 3 after seven innings with only one (unearned) run allowed, but he got pummeled on three days rest in the decisive Game 6, failing to record an out.

A year later though, the Mets were back in the postseason behind Leiters second career All-Star season, which saw him tie a career-high with 200 strikeouts in 208 innings.

He then pitched to a 3.00 ERA in 15 innings across two playoff starts as the Mets lost only two games in total to San Francisco and St.

Louis en route to their first NL pennant since 1986.

Their World Series foe was all-too-familiar.

For Leiter to square off against the team that drafted him, the team that washed their hands of him, in the 2000 World Series a year later must have stirred up complicated feelings.

He started Games 1 and 5, ultimately failing to win either contest despite throwing 15.2 innings and allowing just five earned runs.

Closer Armando Benitez blew a potential win for Leiter in the Mets opening loss, and while he flummoxed the Yankees in the finalethrowing 142 pitches in desperation to try to keep the Mets season aliveLuis Sojo hit a thousand-hopper up the middle with two outs in the ninth for the finishing blow.

As the sun gradually set on his career, Leiter was acquired by the Yankees for a player to be named later in July of 2005.

The old horse was in his last race, and while his first start back in pinstripes was a strong, 6.1-inning outing against the defending champion Boston Red Sox , inconsistent play led the Yankees to move him to the bullpen by early September.

Leiter did get the win in what would be the final game of his career, entering ALDS Game 4 and generating an inning-ending double play from Darin Erstad.

The Yankees rallied in the next frame to take the lead to give Leiter the W, but they were eliminated the next day in Anaheim.

Leiter returned for one more Yankees camp, with the intention of working into shape to pitch in the inaugural 2006 World Baseball Classic .

While the 40-year-old was a member of Team USA, he only made one appearance, and ultimately retired live on YES Network (in what would be a nod to his post-playing career) following a spring training game upon his return to the team.

Im only 30, so the YES Network is how I got to know Leiter the best.

Hes spent time in the booth and as a studio analyst since 2006, as well as stints with the MLB Network and a brief run with FOX Sports Florida covering a few Marlins games in 2016.

Joining the Mets as a baseball ops advisor in 2019 has kept Leiter in the baseball world, even as his son Jack became an NCAA star at Vanderbilt.

Al Leiter kind of has a dream MLB career, at least for me.

He never had to deal with the celebrity and nonsense that someone like Roger Clemens or Ken Griffey Jr.

did, and he steered clear of a lot of the vices his contemporaries couldnt.

Yet he was good enough to play baseball at its highest level for almost two decades, won two rings and got to be The Man a couple of other times.

Leiters not the biggest miss the Yankees have made, and they certainly had enough of their own success in the 90s.

Still, while he never quite got to that 20-win level, hes certainly another instance of the 1980s New York Yankees not knowing what they had.

Sources SABR Bio Baseball Reference FanGraphs Matt Ferenchick, Recounting the time Al Leiter threw 163 pitches in one game, SB Nation.com , November 28, 2015 Paul Swydan, Worst Final Seasons, Part One, FanGraphs , September 16, 2013 Randy Miller, Reliving Al Leiter setting N.J.

prep record with 32 Ks in 13 innings, NJ.com , April 14, 2016 Rob Neyer, A brief and unhappy history of fire sales, SB Nation.com , November 14, 2012 Thomas Brown, Al Leiter throws Marlins first no-hitter, SABR Games Project, Accessed January 4, 2025 Thomas Brown, Al Leiter, Mets blank Reds in NL wild-card tiebreaker, SABR Games Project, Accessed January 4, 2025 Previously on Top Could-Have-Been Yankees Jay Buhner Full List (to date).

This article has been shared from the original article on pinstripealley, here is the link to the original article.