Flounder Dorfman said:
Completely agree. Who knows what Leiter turns out to be, but somewhere along the way fans started to expect guys called up to come in and dominate. Maybe it's a reflection on our society now. I don't know, but it doesn't really work that way.
And actually, when it does, it usually falls off a cliff pretty soon as other teams get film on a guy and figure out his weaknesses. It doesn't always work out like Paul Skenes, but it would be a lot cooler if it did.
This is a byproduct of Ranger fans being so beaten down historically and that any source of optimism is in "wait till Prospect X comes up!!" Then when they inevitably struggle a not insignificant segment of fans (not necessarily the ones on this thread, but more in general) start writing them off because they see a Skenes or Gunnar Henderson showing results without seeing the path they took to get there.
Heck, we won the whole damn thing last year and the majority of the fanbase went right back to gassing up Langford as Mike Trout 2.0 and expecting Leiter to dominate right off the rip. It's a hard habit to break, but I hope that we're maturing as an organization so that our fanbase can adjust it's expectations around prospects. And I say this as someone that was crushed when Ruben Mateo broke his leg running to first, and when Mike Olt came up and looked lost, and when we traded John Danks, the list goes on and on.
I'm excited for Leiter, and noticed one of the asst. GM's quotes along the lines of "he's got nothing left to prove", so to me that means this is it -- time to shove or be a career AAAA pitcher. I'm honestly more optimistic about Rocker, probably because he hasn't been blasted in the majors yet!