Posted May 27, 200519 yr I want to preface by saying that I don't like Leiter, and I was not in favor of signing him at the beginning of the year. BUT everyone - except a very small majority - is overreacting. There are two main reasons for this. 1. There was a specific reason we signed Leiter, and it has nothing to do with his "mentoring" of our young pitchers - which I think is a joke. Leiter was the only guy available for us to sign. Because of our financial situation (I hope I don't need to explain), we could only sign a player for a one year deal; therefore, that took us out of the running for guys like Odalis Perez, Clement, Wright, Milton, etc. Also, the management needed to save face with a dwindling, fickle fan base by bringing in a pseudo big name player that made it seem like losing Penny and Pavano were "baseball" and not financial moves. Leiter fits that description; plus he is well liked in South Florida because of his previous service. Finally, Leiter was the only starting pitcher of any ability willing to accept deferred money w/o interest. We are not paying him 8 million. 1 million of that is being paid to his charity, which is a tax write off and thus essentially not being paid. We are paying him 4 million this year and 3 million next year. In today's age with high average market returns, deferring 3 million dollars is sacrificing a significant amount of money. In summary, Leiter was signed out of necessity, and NOT a choice among a number of talented pitchers. 2. Leiter has not been as horrible as everyone is making it sound. Leiter has made 9 starts. In six of those starts, he has kept the Marlins in games. In fact, in those six starts he has an ERA of 3.21 and averaged 5.61 innings per start. Now, the innings per start is not good, but we knew going into this year that Leiter throws a ton of pitches and will not go deep into games. Also, with those numbers Leiter deserved to win more than 2 of those starts, but the Marlins didn't score runs for him. If he had won 4 of those 6, I don't think everyone would be bitching as much, but that's what you get for considering a worthless stat like record. He has had 3 horrendous starts. This last one can be ignored somewhat, at least I feel, because of the long rain delay. The other two were terrible with no excuses. But that will happen. His ERA has been drastically inflated by those two starts in which he gave up 16 runs in 7 innings. But overall he has been much better than his current ERA. There are two problems with perception on this board. One is with expectations. Leiter will not and was not signed to replace Pavano. He is not an ace and will only be an adequate middle-of-the-rotation kind of guy. In 6 of 9 starts he has been that. He needs to keep his bad starts to a minimum, which I think he will do. That leads into the second problem with perception on this board. People overreact to a small sample size and underreact to a large sample size. Leiter is a proven veteran who has not seen a deterioration of his abilities since last year. He has not lost velocity or movement; he is struggling with control, which all pitchers regardless of age will struggle with from time to time. Therefore, there is reason to believe that he will stop having these horrendous starts and return to last year?s form. Actually, he will return to the form of his other 6 starts, which is eerily similar to his numbers last year. I would worry more about Moehler. Someone who hasn?t started consistently for 3 years and even when he was starting had an average ERA of about 4.50. He is much more likely to decline than for Leiter to continue pitching inconsistently and having poor starts. Moehler is a case of underreacting to a large sample size of mediocrity. Rob Neyer wrote a nice article about this problem on ESPN.com. http://insider.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/sto..._rob&id=2066419 In conclusion, everyone should ease up on trashing Leiter.
May 27, 200519 yr Do we need 50 Al Leiter threads? Come on. 784965[/snapback] what is your problem dude? finally someone has a decent thread and thats the best you got? come on!
May 27, 200519 yr Do we need 50 Al Leiter threads? Come on. 784965[/snapback] what is your problem dude? finally someone has a decent thread and thats the best you got? come on! 784972[/snapback] I'm not bashing this thread in particular. Come on.
May 27, 200519 yr Do we need 50 Al Leiter threads? Come on. 784965[/snapback] what is your problem dude? finally someone has a decent thread and thats the best you got? come on! 784972[/snapback] I'm not bashing this thread in particular. Come on. 784977[/snapback] there was no need for you to open you pie hole
May 27, 200519 yr Do we need 50 Al Leiter threads? Come on. 784965[/snapback] what is your problem dude? finally someone has a decent thread and thats the best you got? come on! 784972[/snapback] I'm not bashing this thread in particular. Come on. 784977[/snapback] there was no need for you to open you pie hole 784980[/snapback] Probably right. :mischief
May 27, 200519 yr I don't know if what a lot of you say is true regarding why Leiter was signed although I think with the talent coming through the system a 1-2 year pitcher was best suited, but you have sound conclusions. We can't entirely count out that Leiter has declined sharply and is finished. Too soon to say that for sure.
May 27, 200519 yr I agree, to a point. While Leiter's mentoring can't be viewed as the chief reason he was signed (for that you just make him pitching coach), it is one of the factors that allowed us to convince ourselves to give him seven million. Josh Beckett and Dontrelle Willis have directly given a chunk of credit for their great starts to Leiter.
May 27, 200519 yr I wish someone would pay me millions of dollars to lose baseball games. Golly. Maybe my turn is coming. But in all seriousness, I agree with "The Swede". I think Leiter will definitely come around and our offense should definitely help him out a bit in his rough games.
May 27, 200519 yr some really good points here, gives reason to believe that leiter can turn it around. here's hoping the Swede is right.
May 27, 200519 yr I wish someone would pay me millions of dollars to lose baseball games. Golly. Maybe my turn is coming. 785673[/snapback] What the swede is saying now ive been trying to say for days now, albeit less eloquently. And if you read any of what was written (of course assuming that using logic is something your able to do), you can see that leiter could be 6-3, or 5-3 the same way he can be 2-5. Run support figures in to W-L, which is why that stat has to be looked at carefully. And as for ERA, yes its poor, but it is not reflective of every game hes pitched in. In fact, even in the kills, if a call at home or two had gone another way, we may not be having this discussion now
May 27, 200519 yr Leiter has given us a few good games that he should have won, the team should have won and didn't take advantage of it. That is not Leiter's fault. His ERA looks horrendous because the games in which he's been off he's been beyond bad and hasn't given his team a chance to win.
May 27, 200519 yr Al Lieter hasn't pitched bad, he's just been putting the ball in hittable spots ;-)
May 27, 200519 yr Swede, you make some excellent points, although I'm inclined to point out that Moehler had a history of arm troubles that he seems to be over. If this is the case, we may seeing the true Moehler, and his production won't fall off. He says he feels better than he has in years, and his performance bears him out to date. On Leiter, we can agree to disagree. While I agree that players with a track record deserve some leeway, you're ignoring his age. It's one thing to expect Lowell to rebound since he's relatively young and still in his prime (albeit on the back end of his prime). Leiter is on the back end of his career. More often than not when a guy starts to lose it at this stage, there's no recovering. I'm hard pressed to come up with any pitchers over 35 who have turned around horrendous starts. We can equivocate and make excuses for his record (and I'm in agreement with you that record needs to be looked at with regard to things like run support and ERA), but the facts are he got killed by an underperforming Rockies team and an underperforming Mets team, both at home. He's given up 20 runs in 22.1 innings in May for an 8.06 ERA. You're right that the opinions on the board are often written rashly in the heat of the moment after a game, but let's not go too far and absolve Leiter of any blame. There are some mitigating circumstances, but he's still responsible for some crappy outings. To his credit, he has not shied away from taking the blame for them. I'm hoping he can turn this around, but I'm not optimistic about it. I have no problem with people calling him out for poor performance as long as it doesn't turn into people openly rooting against him. That's self-defeating since he's a Marlin, and we could use anything good he can give us.
May 27, 200519 yr Leiter will rebound, but he still won't be on the level of Willis/Beckett/AJ. 785873[/snapback] That's all we're asking for really. Just get us to the later innings so we have a decent chance to win.
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