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Manager Aaron Boone of the New York Yankees.
The New York Yankees, according to longtime general manager Brian Cashman, know they have a good team this season and they also know that team is gone.
“It’s not the same team because of free agency,” Cashman said on Thursday, as quoted by MLB.com, referring primarily to the loss of outfielder Cody Bellinger who in what appears to have been his lone season with the Yankees belted 29 home runs and produced an .813 OPS.
The 2019 National League MVP also handled all three outfield positions, playing 85 games in left field, 52 in right and another 41 in center — which only highlights the value the Yankees lose as the 30-year-old departs for free agency.
To begin the process of adding to the team and getting to a point where the Yankees may have a shot at returning to the World Series for what would be only the third time since the 2000 season, Cashman cleared out five players on Friday, the deadline for extending new contracts to players eligible for arbitration or otherwise under team control.
Pitcher From Famous Family Let Go
The five players who were told that they will be non-tendered, that is, not offered new contracts, were headed by a six-year veteran reliever from one of baseball’s most successful pitching families — a right-hander who was acquired from the Chicago Cubs at the 2024 trade deadline.
Leiter was projected to earn a contract worth $3.75 million in the arbitration process, giving the Yankees their largest cash savings of the day’s non-tenders.
Mark Leiter Jr. became the third member of his family to pitch for the Yankees, after his father Mark Leiter Sr. who made his major league debut with the Bronx Bombers in 1990, but was traded to the Detroit Tigers prior to the 1991 season.
Leiter’s brother, the uncle of Mark Leiter Jr., Al Leiter started his career with the Yankees in 1987, remaining until the end of April 1989 when he was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays for outfielder Jesse Barfield.
Leiter Jr. is also the cousin of Jack Leiter — Al Leiter’s son — the 2021 first-round draft pick of the Texas Rangers.
Leiter Jr. Never Developed Swing-and-Miss Pitches
But Leiter Jr. never really fulfilled the hopes the Yankees had for him. In his two seasons in New York, he threw 70 innings over 80 games, all out of the bullpen, posting an unremarkable 4.89 ERA with just 54 strikeouts. That last statistic may have been the deciding factor in their decision to cut ties with him Friday. The Yankees have been trying to find as many relievers as possible with swing-and-miss stuff, and Leiter simply did not deliver on that priority.
This season, Leiter recorded a 29.1 percent whiff rate — that is, percentage of his pitches that were swung at and missed by batters — which put him in the 77th percentile of MLB pitchers, according to Statcast.
His chase rate — the rate at which batters swung and missed at pitches outside of the strike zone — was far less satisfactory, just 27.3 percent, the 36th percentile. In other words, 64 percent of major league pitchers induce a higher chase rate than Leiter Jr.
The Yankees also declined to offer contracts to four other right-handed pitchers: Ian Hamilton, Scott Effross, Jake Cousins and minor leaguer Michael Arias, who put up a 2.57 ERA and 1.62 WHIP in 21 innings at the Double-A level.
Jonathan Vankin JONATHAN VANKIN is an award-winning journalist and writer who now covers baseball and other sports for Heavy.com. He twice won New England Press Association awards for sports feature writing. He was a sports editor and writer at The Daily Yomiuri in Tokyo, Japan, covering Japan Pro Baseball, boxing, sumo and other sports. More about Jonathan Vankin
