Afternoon Baseball

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Final-game recap

As much as Leiter deteriorated over the past year, he was still a fun guy to watch pitch. Sure, he'd take 20 pitches to finish a batter, but he was clearly a smart pitcher -- he could make the most of the limited talent he had left. Although why he was on the WBC team is beyond me. There had to have been someone, anyone. The Griddle did not enjoy watching him pitch last year, however.
That being said, he was a top-tier starter in the post-strike period, and is was one of the dwindling number of men playing from the absolutely stacked 1992-1993 Blue Jays World Series winners, with John Olerud also retiring, and retreads Greg Myers and Pat Borders unlikely to catch on. (David Wells, Mike Timlin, Woody Williams and Jeff Kent are still active; David Weathers pitched a couple innings in 1992, and Shawn Green and Carlos Delgado had 7 at-bats combined for the 1993 club.)

Anyways, watching Al Leiter as an opposing fan -- he was a Met, after all -- you respected him, never thought a game against him was going to be easy, and yet you knew that in the biggest spot, your team would somehow pull it out. Leiter was not a postseason failure, by any means -- 2 rings. He just seemed to have some pretty terrible luck. He pitched in 21 postseason games, starting 11, yet only had 5 decisions. Both wins were random-luck relief decisions -- 1993 WS, where he came in the 6th, the Blue Jays scored that inning; and the 2005 ALDS, where he came in relief in the 7th, the Yankees scored two that inning.
He went 0-1 in 5 starts in the 2000 playoffs despite an ERA around 3 and never pitching less than 7 innings. His 142-pitch gem ended with Luis Sojo (another part-timer from the 1993 Blue Jays) smacking a seeing-eye single -- a sad end to a career year.

But in the big picture, Leiter had 22 wins at the end of 1994 and was entering his age-29 season. He never won less than 10 until 2005, and made a nice career out of almost nothing. Plus, he proved in 2004 that he's already a better announcer than Tim McCarver and Joe Buck. So congrats, Al, on a nice career. Stick around the game in some form.