ARLINGTON, Texas (AP) — The Texas Rangers placed Jack Leiter on the 15-day injured list Sunday with an ankle issue the right-hander has been battling most of the season, and star shortstop Corey Seager still isn’t ready to return from a concussion.
The Rangers recalled right-hander Jose Corniell from Triple-A Round Rock but didn’t say how they would fill Leiter’s spot in the rotation Tuesday at Miami. Six of Corniell’s seven minor league appearances were starts.
President of baseball operations Chris Young said Leiter was trying to pitch through what is being called right ankle posterior impingement, but his mechanics were affected by compensating for the injury.
Leiter lost all three of his June starts and had a 9.88 ERA, capped by allowing seven hits and six runs in four innings in a on Thursday. He is 3-7 with a 5.29 ERA in 15 starts this season.
“Jack has not made it an issue. That speaks to his level of competitiveness,” Young said. “He’s not made excuses, but the reality is he’s having to change his delivery to compensate for it. We cannot put him in harm’s way. He’s too important to our future.”
Young said the 26-year-old Leiter was already dealing with the balky ankle when he aggravated the injury by slipping on an on-deck circle in his fifth start of the season April 22 at home against the New York Yankees. Young said imaging showed the injury was getting worse.
“We’ve been trying to monitor it as best we could,” manager Skip Schumaker said. “But the reality is he just wasn’t able to do what he was capable of doing throughout the starts. I think it started showing up more and more. It wasn’t fair to him that we kept sending him out there.”
Seager was eligible to return from the Friday, but Young said he was still in the protocol. He was participating in meetings and running on the field before the game.
Schumaker said the two-time World Series MVP would be on the upcoming 10-game road trip with stops in Miami, Toronto and Cleveland, but couldn’t say when Seager would play.
“It’s still day to day,” Schumaker said. “I’m trying to make sure that he feels good after this kind of stimulation and inside the weight room, hitting and then running.”
Seager was in the worst slump of his career when he took a few days off in mid-May and ended up with a sore back that extended his absence to 19 games. The five-time All-Star is hitting .186 with nine homers and 24 RBIs.
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