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Originally Posted by mlyons
At the age of 28, after his eighth big league season, he had a career ERA of 4.75. Forget about injuries; that's just not all that good. Don't get me wrong, he put it together nicely after that, but I'm not going to give him a free ride on the first third of his career.
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I understand what you are saying, but the first third of his career, as you call it, consisted of about 115 total innings in 6 years. How can you forget about the injuries when he basically was pitching injured for the bulk of that time? 1987 he was called up from AA and threw 22 innings. Not much to go on in terms of performance potential. Then 1988 he went on the DL twice I believe battling blisters. Again not a benchmark year. And 89 he got hurt early, right before the Blue Jays trade. He onyl made one start for Toronto and in tremendous pain. Then thats in except for September throwaway appearences like his ONE inning in 92 because he was in Dunedin trying to rehab his elbow for all of 90 and 91. I think Leiter's real career starts in 93, but I dont see how you can seperate the injuries from the performance for that "first third"