ARLINGTON — The good news is that Rangers right-handed pitcher Jack Leiter cruised through the first inning with a couple of strikeouts and quelled at least one bugaboo that’s befallen he and his rotation mates this season. 

The bad news is that Leiter still has a frame of his own left to conquer. 

Leiter allowed five earned runs — four with two outs — in the fifth inning alone in a 6-0 loss against the Cleveland Guardians at Globe Life Field on Saturday night. He allowed two hits in the game’s first four innings, but once the visitors’ lineup faced him for a second or third time by the fifth inning, his high-end stuff was picked apart by a disciplined array of hitters. 

It’s become a worrisome trend that’s marred more than a handful of otherwise fine starts made by the 26-year-old former first-round draft pick. Leiter has an 11.12 ERA in the fifth inning of games this season and a 3.47 ERA in all others combined. He’s yielded a 5.82 ERA and .818 OPS when opponents face him for the second and third time, and in those situations, his strikeout rate and walk rate trend in the wrong directions. It’s in part limited Leiter to less than five-and-a-half innings per start this season despite a quality arsenal that rivals most, and in Saturday’s loss, it forced the Rangers to use three relief pitchers to cover the second half of a game that’d spun out of hand. 

“We need to get him through at least the fifth inning and not have to cover four-plus innings,” Rangers manager Skip Schumaker said. “Especially at home with that extra inning no matter what.”

Leiter retired nine of the first 10 batters he faced and went toe-to-toe with Guardians right-handed pitcher Tanner Bibee who, against a healthy Rangers lineup, threw eight efficient shutout innings. Guardians third baseman José Ramírez hit a high Leiter four-seam fastball — similar to one that he swung through in his first at-bat of the game — into the Rangers bullpen for a solo home run in the fourth inning. Leiter believed that fastball and the cutter he threw to shortstop Brayan Rocchio in the fifth inning, which was hit off the right field foul pole for another solo home run, were well-executed pitches. 

The remainder of the fifth was less so. Leiter walked Ramírez on five secondary pitches with nobody out, and after the All-Star infielder stole second base and advanced to third on an error, designated hitter Chase DeLauter struck a cutter into right field and gave the Guardians a three-run lead. First baseman Kyle Manzardo hit another high four-seam fastball down the right field line for a double in the next at-bat, and after that, center fielder Daniel Schneemann singled off a middle-middle changeup to drive in a fifth run and chase Leiter from the game. He threw 15 secondary pitches after Rocchio’s home run in the fifth inning. Eight were balls and two resulted in base hits. 

“Oftentimes, the second and third time through the order, it becomes even more important to execute those pitches,” Leiter said. “You want to be ahead of every guy, but inevitably you’re going to be behind, and you need to be able to land those secondaries and do it effectively. I haven’t been able to do that in as many of my starts as I’d like this year.”

Leiter acknowledged that he was “fighting himself” the entire start, and when the Guardians were able to face him for a second or third time, the relative lack of execution was exposed. Schumaker suggested there could be a diversity component to the middle-inning woes as well. Ramírez and DeLauter recorded their run-scoring hits on the same pitches that they struck out on in the first inning. Manzardo had already seen Leiter’s four-seam fastball seven times in two at-bats before his fifth-inning double. 

“He definitely has the pitches to mix it up a little bit different, and maybe we’re going at it with the same attack plan because it was so successful the first time through, maybe he’s getting into a rhythm and patterns,” Schumaker said. “That’s something we’ve definitely got to look at and help him through. I think that’s the main thing — see if there’s any patterns that we’re falling into that maybe the other team is adjusting to the second or third time around — and maybe mix it up even more.”