The Rangers announced Wednesday that they’ve signed No. 2 overall draft pick Jack Leiter. He’ll join the club on a bonus worth a bit more than $7.9MM, ESPN’s Jeff Passan reports (via Twitter). That checks in slightly above the $7.7899MM slot value associated with the selection. It’s also more than $1MM north of the $6.5MM bonus for #1 overall pick Henry Davis and seems likely to wind up as the top bonus in this year’s class.
That’s not too surprising considering Leiter’s pedigree. The 21-year-old has been touted as one of the likely top picks in the draft for more than a year and only reinforced that hype with a dominant season at Vanderbilt in 2021. In 110 innings, the 6’1″, 205-pound righty pitched to a pristine 2.13 ERA while punching out 41.6 percent of his opponents. His 179 total strikeouts tied with Vandy teammate Kumar Rocker for tops in the country among Division I hurlers.
Leiter entered the draft as the consensus top arm available. Each of Kiley McDaniel of ESPN, Baseball America and Keith Law of the Athletic placed the righty as the best pitcher on their pre-draft rankings and among the five most talented players in the class overall. Leiter’s arsenal is headlined by a mid-90’s fastball with excellent life that plays above barrels at the top of the strike zone. His assortment of secondary offerings are solid, and Leiter has the athleticism and mechanics to project as an obvious starting pitcher. He’s polished enough that he should arrive in the majors rather quickly.
Nice
@Rangers29 congrats!
Yes!
Our organization has won today.
This is good news. Three questions Rangers 29. Where do you feel Gibson and Kennedy are headed and for what return? Should Gallo be extended or traded or left unchanged? Finally, if the Rangers could get Alcantara from Marlins, who do you think we would have to give up.
Congrats, great kid and really good pitcher!
1. I think either Gibson and Kennedy or Gallo and Kennedy are packaged. Right now, I’m hedging by bets on Gibson and Kennedy being shipped to Toronto for something surrounding Orelvis Martinez and CJ Van Eyk.
2. Right now it seems inevitable that Gallo will be traded, and in the post-game show of last night’s game he even gave a pretty heartfelt goodbye to all of the Rangers’ fans as it seems the rumors are coming to a head. Imo, he should be extended for what HE wants immediately. This guy sincerely wants to stay in Texas, and it is bringing him down greatly being the center of so many trade talks. We should build around him, but sadly, we won’t. He’s as good as gone.
2. Alcantara has always interested me, and with the Marlins acquiring Luzardo mere minutes ago, a trade for Alcantara seems slightly possible. BUT… it would take lot. Granted, to kill two birds with one stone, I think Alcantara would be a great return for a Gallo trade to Miami along with additional pieces coming Texas’ way. To create an entirely new offer though, something like Adolis, Huff, Crouse, and a few 35 FV’s could probably get that deal done as well.
If Gallo is traded, and I think you are sadly correct as JD is a buffoon and doesn’t care about the players or the fans, do you think it would be to Yankees, Mets, Braves, Padres, Giants, or someone else? For whom on each of those teams. An interesting thought for me would be to Cincy for Lodolo/Bishop and Aquino. Another entertaining idea would be a deal to Mets for Davis/Smith + mid-level prospect. If some sort of three way deal were worked out where Rangers got Azolay and Brennan Davis from Cubs for Gallo and Cubs got JD Davis and D Smith from Mets for BRyant would be interesting except for the fact that Gallo should draw more than B DAvis and Azolay.
Why on earth would the Mets give up two players off their major league roster for a couple of months of Bryant? If they are getting Bryant because they need offense why would they be hurting themselves offensively in the process of obtaining him?
Spell check failed it should have read Smith or Davis as I don’t see how you get KB without sending one of them back to Cubs.
I’ve read a lot the last couple weeks about packaging big-name players together to get a better return, but this occurs so rarely I would be surprised to see it actually happen. Two more days to find out…
Definitely padres. 1 they have an abundance of high-end youth that rangers covet 2 preller was in rangers front office when Gallo was drafted and has always been in love with him and it actually works well for Gallo, too. Being a Vegas kid that seems to love warmer southern climate, plus more west coast exposure to market himself for year and half going into fa
I’m hoping there heading to queens
Man I hope Gallo stays. It will be a sad day if he is traded
You do realize that Alcantara is under team control thru ’25 (at bargain prices for the next 2 yrs) right? Gallo is only thru ’22 at a much higher cost. I don’t know how much more you’d REALISTICALLY expect to receive fr Miami.
And he’s instantly the number one prospect in the Rangers system!
is he starting vs Arizona tonight?
Bartolo Colon might be the better guy to start tonight. Lol
Colon is doing well down in Mexico. He has the same cell # so…
See you in NY in the future.
Yes that is true, he will be pitching for the Rangers.
I’m sure daddy drove the Rangers crazy and forced the bonus $$.
It’s barely over slot
I saw Al Lieter and his family at an airpot once. Jack couldn’t have been more than 5 or 6 years old at the time. Crazy that he’s in the majors now. Good for him! Sorry the story wasn’t very exciting. That’s all I got.
Not quite in the majors yet. Was drafted like 1200 guys were in each of the recent years leading to the shortened 2020 draft. Congrats to him and I hope he has a bright future, but he hasn’t made it to the show yet
Touche, but he is now a multi-millionaire whether he gets to the show or not – that is impressive based on where he was from a “prospect” perspective ~4 years ago.
Yea sorry bad choice of words. But he “made it” so to speak.
Based on the fact that his father made about $70 mil in his career, it’s safe to say he had already made it, with or without a baseball career.
Haha. I didn’t mean it in the financial sense.
Congratulations to him, his dad, and his mom (my cousin Lori).
Woah you’re related to the lieters?!
Through my maternal grandfather. It’s distant, but I remember her from family get togethers when I was growing up.
Could become the Leiter of the pack!
Excellent news! Major step in the rebuild!
Congratulations to Jack and I hope it works out. Al Leiter I met briefly at Shea and he was super nice.
I met him at a Lindenhurst little league banquet in the 80s. He was a Yankee prospect who couldn’t stay healthy. Goes to show you never know.
Overpaid for #pick. Should have paid him 5.6 and used the money to sign other picks. Pirates had a better draft. Used there money better
That’s fine but with the second pick the Rangers got the best available player that would sign. I agree Pirates were able to spread their money out better but the Rangers got who they wanted and paid the value of pick and just a little over. They also sign 2 guys over slot from the 3rd and 4th rounds by significant amounts so it didn’t affect how they managed the rest of the pool money.
@dopt – There was no way Leiter was signing for under slot, so that is a pipe dream! The only way they could pay the #2 pick $2.4M under slot would be if they selected a consensus #15-25 prospect with the second pick and if they did that, the Rangers fans would have gone crazy! They’ve tried that before and it failed. They took what they believed was the best player available and going $100K over slot value is more than acceptable for the #2 overall pick. The kid’s stuff is filthy and he should move rather quickly through the minors. There’s a decent chance of seeing him late in 2023, and hopefully he’s part of the full time rotation at the beginning of 2024. They should start him in High A ball and see how he fares.
Tex needs to be ultra aggro this off-season off this Leiter landing.I remember the talk when they were supposed to be big spenders going into new ballpark.It’s time to get competitive!!
Nah we don’t need to be hitting FA hard yet.
Question for the group. Would you rather have The Pirate’s draft picks or The Ranger’s? Both are intriguing.
Recent draft choice signing by the Rangers leaves the budget a bit LEITER !!