NASHVILLE, Tenn.— The University of Georgia baseball team is chirping. Like birds strung across a power line, the players are standing on the top step of the visitors’ dugout, elbows perched on the railing.
They shout encouragement to teammate Cole Tate in staccato rhythm.
"Come on, kid. Come on, kid. Come on, 1-5."
Tate digs into the batter’s box to face Vanderbilt sophomore Jack Leiter. Two outs. Runners at second and third. Bulldogs leading 1-0 in the fifth inning. Everyone inside of Hawkins Field, the gorgeous little park on the city’s historic West End, recognizes the moment for what it is.
A night after beating Kumar Rocker, Georgia has the chance to break open another game against the defending NCAA champions and Leiter, arguably college baseball’s best pitcher.
"Come on, kid. Come on, kid. Come on, 1-5."
The right-handed Leiter, who’s already fanned 10 hitters and worked out of a third-inning jam, stands on the mound unfazed. No fidgeting, no wasted movement. He needs something around the strike zone, the count 3-2, the game poised on a knife’s edge.
Leiter makes a good pitch and gets Tate to ground harmlessly to shortstop. Inning over.
The Bulldogs recede into their dugout, voices muted, opportunity lost. Leiter walks to the home dugout, breaking a smile only as his teammates greet him and offer high fives on this April 9 evening when the Commodores would rally for a 5-2 win.
“In today’s amateur baseball world, you have kids who are throwers, kids with arm strength who are gifted with a high-spin breaking ball or what have you,” Vanderbilt coach Tim Corbin said. “Jack was armed with the ability to know how to pitch. He understood pitching at least at the level that he knew it — and he’s understanding it at a greater level right now.”
As the Pirates decide who to take with the No. 1 overall pick in Major League Baseball's draft this July, Leiter’s stats (7-1 record, 1.49 ERA, 102 strikeouts in 60.1 innings) are eye-catching. But it’s what you don’t see when closely observing the son of a former major-league pitcher that’s almost as impressive. No trace of entitlement. No sense of panic in tight spots. No signs of indecision when working through an SEC batting order.
It’s as though Leiter has been building toward this moment from the time he began pitching as a freshman at Delbarton, the all-male Catholic prep school in Morristown, N.J. Taught the game by his father, Al Leiter, a two-time World Series champion, and groomed by Scott Brown, among college baseball’s elite pitching coaches, he has processed all the intel and worked diligently to reach his potential.
The result is a low-maintenance, well-rounded prospect who seems prepared for whatever expectations await in pro ball.
“I’ve seen guys who can throw 90 miles-per-hour and have good breaking stuff,” Delbarton coach Bruce Shatel said. “Then, all of a sudden, someone gets on base and they can’t hold runners, they can’t pick up a bunt, they balk when a runner breaks early.
“Jack is a cool customer, the guy who wouldn’t be bothered by a dump truck driving through the middle of the infield. He’d step off the rubber and let the thing go past him. That’s Jack Leiter. He comes from good fabric.”
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Anthony Volpe, the 2019 first-round pick of the Yankees, recalls his first memories of Leiter when the two eighth graders were playing summer ball in New Jersey.
“He was probably the smallest kid on the field and I was right there with him,” the minor-league shortstop said. “We were both pretty good players, but neither one of us was very big.”
Leiter comes from a family of major-league pitchers. His old man was a 6-foot-2, 200-pound lefty who played 19 seasons. His uncle, Mark Leiter, was a 6-foot-3, 200-pound righty who played 11 seasons. His cousin, Mark Leiter Jr., made 47 big-league appearances.
Given his lack of size, Leiter wasn’t sure pitching was in his future. At age 14, his backup plan was more developed than his curveball. He spent hours taking cuts, honing his swing. He worked on his fielding and footwork, thinking middle infield might be his avenue to the next level.
Al Leiter never pushed his son to be a pitcher. He was just happy the boy shared his passion for the game. But on his way out the door to announce Yankees’ games on YES Network, he would hear the sound of heavy balls smacking against the padded walls in the family basement. It was young Jack strengthening his right arm, waiting for his growth spurt.
“I always had a good arm for my size, but it was just that — ‘he’s got a good arm for his size,’” said Leiter, who’s listed at 6-foot-1, 205 pounds on the Vanderbilt roster. “Compared to the bigger and stronger kids on the field, there was no comparison. On my travel teams, I wasn’t the go-to pitcher. . . . . I thought if I’m not going to be a pitcher than nobody was going to worker harder than me in the batting cages.”
Shatel converted Leiter to pitcher as a freshman. The mechanics and poise were what you might expect from a youngster who learned at the knee of a two-time All-Star. Leiter pitched just three varsity innings, however, his fastball topping out at 80 mph.
That was about to change courtesy of weight training, band work and genetics. Leiter’s thighs, his coach said, thickened like “tree trunks.”
“The next March, we go to Florida Atlantic on our spring trip for a week,” Shatel said. “Jack gets on the mound and the velocity is 89 to 91 mph. It was remarkable. To jump nine or 10 mph in one year was a jaw dropper.”
Leiter’s middle infield days were behind him.
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BRUCE SHATEL
Al Leiter with Bruce Shatel in Florida in 2019.
Ten minutes into a phone interview, Shatel is waiting for the question, ready to turn on it like a 3-0 fastball.
What’s it like dealing with a gregarious parent who pitched at the highest level and has described himself to a reporter as a bit of a “nut job?”
“Ha,” Shatel said. “Al is a very passionate guy whether you are talking baseball, the weather or how the grass grows on the field.”
Shatel had experience teaching kids whose dads were professional athletes — albeit in a different sport. He coached hockey for years at Delbarton and worked with the offspring of a handful of New Jersey Devils, including Hall of Fame defenseman Scott Stevens.
Al took an immediate liking to Shatel and volunteered his time to serve as the team’s de facto pitching coach. Volpe recalls him inviting the entire pitching staff to his home to watch a Yankees’ game. Prior to each pitch, Al would quiz kids on what they would throw given the situation and the hitters’ strengths.
That kind of graduate-level detail helped Delbarton make three consecutive appearances in the New Jersey non-public school state title game. Leiter, who dealt with injuries as a sophomore, lost a 1-0 decision on an error in the 2018 championship before pitching his club to victory a year later.
“Al was like the pied piper,” Shatel said. “He’d walk down the street and there would be six other Delbarton dads following him, all fathers of pitchers, trying get just a little bit of knowledge to communicate to their sons. He had a helluva a following.”
On days Leiter started, Al stood behind the backstop charting pitches, scribbling notes and offering feedback to his son after games.
The teenager’s bedroom walls were festooned with 40 quotes from pitching greats — none from his dad. “I get those every day,” he told the New York Post in 2019.
Shatel believes Leiter did a masterful job of absorbing his father’s wisdom and discarding the bluster in what could have been a learning environment fraught with tension.
“I think it would be rare for any kid not to question their parent even though they are knowledgeable,” Leiter said a few weeks ago. “When I was 12- or 13-years old, I would get into arguments. I wouldn’t want to hear it anymore, but I was listening. I never had any other pitching coaches or anything like that. So everything I have learned has come from him.
“Mechanically, I have made a lot of strides since (then). My mechanics were so different . . . He’s pretty much the sole reason for the change in my mechanics through high school. As I got older, I definitely enjoyed listening to his advice.”
In 2018, Leiter and Volpe won a gold medal for Team USA in the under-18 Pan-American Championship in Panama. Leiter pitched the Americans to victory in the title game. On the prep level, Shatel handed him the ball in every key game.
Major-league scouts packed the stands at Delbarton, constantly calling Shatel to find out when Leiter was pitching and at what time Volpe was taking batting practice.
“It was like being the manager for Madonna back in the day,” the coach said.
Volpe opted to turn pro. Leiter probably would have been drafted in the early rounds, too, but made it clear he was honoring his commitment to Vanderbilt — just as Rocker did. Higher education is important to Al and Lori Leiter, and they have encouraged their son and three daughters to pursue it.
Al had chosen pro ball over college, but his family’s finances obviously different today than they were in 1984.
If the Pirates elect to take Leiter at No. 1 overall, Volpe said they will be getting one of the most disciplined players in the draft. It’s a point echoed by Corbin, who marvels at how well-organized Leiter’s locker is in the Vanderbilt clubhouse.
“Jack is buttoned-up in every aspect of his life,” Volpe said. “He takes school very seriously. You can’t be all over the place (mentally) in the classroom and in your social life and expect to be disciplined on the field. He checks all the boxes.”
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As a child, Leiter attended a Tampa Bay Rays game with his father. Future Cy Young award winner David Price was on the mound. The wide-eyed Leiter looked around the crowd and spotted a few fans wearing black-and-gold No. 14 jerseys with Price’s name stitched on the backs.
He didn’t understand the color schemes of the shirts until his father explained that Price had gone to Vanderbilt. Talk about a recruiting tool. In the end, Leiter elected to become a Commodore, spurning offers from North Carolina and Duke among others.
Vanderbilt has evolved into a pitching pipeline for the big leagues under the watch of Corbin and Brown, producing All-Stars such as Sonny Gray, Walker Buehler and Price.
“All the pro guys want to come back in the offseason and want to share their knowledge with the current guys and keep up communication with them,” Leiter said. “That’s what makes this such a special place.”
Leiter and Rocker (8-1, 1.64 ERA, 81 strikeouts in 55 innings) are well positioned to follow in that lineage. Each figures to be a top-5 pick in the draft. Several scouts insist the Pirates would fine with either pitcher.
Some view Rocker as having a higher ceiling and Leiter possessing a higher floor in terms of pro potential.
Vanderbilt and the respective families have tried to limit talk about the draft. Neither pitcher has done one-on-one interviews during the season and Al did not respond to a request through the MLB Network, where he serves as an analyst.
“As you'd expect, he's been getting a steady flow of these requests,” an MLB Network spokesperson wrote in an email.
There’s been no communication blackout between the two Vanderbilt staff aces. Rocker recently told the SEC Network after a game that Leiter frequently shares pitching tips from his father, who’s in Nashville for almost all of his son’s starts.
“He’s not one of those guys who thinks he has all the answers,” Corbin said of Al Leiter. “He was looking for a lot of answers when going through the recruiting process to see if this was the right place for his son. At the end of it, his son made the decision. They allowed him to make it. This wasn’t something Jack was doing for his parents or his dad. This baseball situation was completely exclusive to him. They separated the experience for him.”
The global pandemic limited Leiter to just four appearances in his freshman year. He didn’t make his first start against an SEC opponent until he struck out 16 and threw a no-hitter against South Carolina on March 20 with Al in attendance.
𝐍𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 done before, may 𝐧𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 be done again. @jackleiter22 | #VandyBoys pic.twitter.com/KPm9Kc8oLv
— Vanderbilt Baseball (@VandyBoys) April 14, 2021
Leiter’s fastball consistently hits the mid-90s, but he has an assortment of pitches he can throw for strikes. Leiter is the latest prospect to benefit from the analytical mind of Brown, who’s been touted for jobs as a Major League pitching coach.
However, the Vanderbilt coaching staff is quick to credit his development to the old pitcher who’s yet to find one of his quotes on his son’s bedroom walls.
“Jack came here as a pitcher,” Corbin said. “He’s someone who had several different pitches and he had an aptitude for pitching that just isn’t common among a lot of high school kids.”
Electric stuff aside, Volpe said his friend’s low-watt personality will serve him well in pro ball.
Leiter, who turned 21 on Wednesday, doesn’t carry himself like a pitching prodigy. He’s approachable and doesn’t amble through life waiting for others to cater to him without ever reaching for a check. He prides himself on living in the moment with the understanding it could all be taken away at any time.
“If you went out to dinner with him, you wouldn’t know he was this big-time college pitcher,” Volpe said. “Jack is really good at baseball, but baseball is not the be-all and end-all for him. With a lot of guys, baseball is their everything. They don’t have a release point. That’s not Jack.”
The challenges will grow as Leiter gets closer to putting the family name back in the majors. Will it be as a member of the Pirates’ organization? Ben Cherington will inform the baseball world in July.
By then, maybe there will be a few No. 22 Vanderbilt jerseys in the stands at PNC Park.
