Rangers prospect Jack Leiter on living with 5 roommates, his entertainment habits

Texas Rangers pitching prospect Jack Leiter, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2021 MLB draft, recently joined The Hang Zone on Sportsradio 96.7/1310 The Ticket [KTCK-FM] to talk about pitching, how he feels about some of the rule changes coming to baseball and some of his life off the diamond. Here are some of the highlights, lightly edited for clarity:

On if he is a gamer:

Leiter: “I wouldn’t consider myself a gamer, but I do like playing MLB The Show in particular on PlayStation. … I have no idea (what my rating should be), but I did have a car in this game – they do it for some of the younger minor league guys – so that was pretty cool. Just one of the many moments along the way that you kind of step back, and you’re like, “this is pretty cool.”

On if he really took The History of Country Music while at Vanderbilt:

Leiter: “I did. Freshman year. It’s actually a really popular class to take there. … Yeah it was awesome. I think I did pretty well in that class. The quizzes are kind of just like studying certain songs and the professor would play the first 15, 20 seconds of it and you have to write down what song it was. It’s definitely different than your typical math test or something like that, but it’s pretty interesting.”

On if he lives by himself or with roommates:

Leiter: “Yeah we’re in a house. There’s actually six of us. The whole minor league housing thing this year, they made it so the organization provides housing, so it’s been really awesome, obviously.

On cleaning and divvying up chores:

Leiter: “I would say it’s somewhere in the middle. None of us are too messy but also we’re not super OCD cleaning every inch of the house. We actually did get back from the recent road trip and the house was clean, so kind of a mystery, honestly. I think it was the Rangers who did it. But I think it’s through Air BNB so it might have been a cleaning service so the house got cleaned and none of us complained”

On patterning himself after certain pitchers and learning:

Leiter: “I would definitely consider myself more of a student of pitching and a lot of that has to do with my dad. We’re just always talking about if it was a good outing, what could I have done better and if it was a bad outing, usually you take the positives and kind of move past it and look what you can improve upon. I’m always watching big league games. I of course watched my dad pitch and obviously adopted most of if not all of his pitching philosophies and the things he looks at in mechanics. So there is definitely guys that I’ve watched and I’ll watch any game. There could be a guy I’ve never heard of and I’ll look at it, I;ll look at the way he throws and the mechanics and the pitches he throws. If he’s got one I really like, I might look into it and if he did an interview, showed his grip, something like that. I love messing around with that kind of stuff.”

On what he’s into entertainment wise, TV or movies:

Leiter: “We’ll throw on some movies every once in a while. I just started a show in Netflix called The Lincoln Lawyer. It’s been pretty interesting so far. I’m a big Netflix show guy and I’ve watched a lot of different series.

What about watching other sports:

Leiter: “I’m a big sports fan. Big basketball fan. Football fan. I lived in South Florida until fifth grade and that’s kind of when a kid who likes sports starts really paying attention. I kind of stuck with those Miami teams. It didn’t follow with me to New Jersey with like the Knicks and Giants or Jets and Nets. I like the Dolphins and Heat. The Heat have been doing really well, so that’s been fun to follow. But again I root for good games. And excitement in sports. I love sports. We went to a starts playoff fame and trying to go to a Mavs game this weekend, so I like all the sports. …Listen, the Mavs have been really fun to watch. Luka, he’s something special. And I’m hoping we can go to a game this weekend, and that’s of course who we’ll be rooting for.”

Click or tap here to listen to the full interview.

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