Whoever coined the phrase “less is more” must have been talking about Jon Lester.
Lester has emerged before our very eyes to give the Red Sox a weapon they have lacked since the Bruce Hurst days: a bona fide left-handed starter that can pitch near the top of the rotation.
Lester’s ERA stands at a sparkling 3.13 with 103.2 innings pitched. He’s pacing to hurl 206 innings which would blow by his career total of 144.6 innings. Of course, he won’t end the season with even 200 innings pitched because the Red Sox will start giving him an extended rest between starts, much like Josh Beckett just received two extra days of rest. Nevertheless, it’s rather impressive that he has a 6-3 record (which projects to 17-5) after we weren’t expecting anything stupendous from him… well, maybe except the coaching staff.
It’s also not a fluke that he’s holding batters to a .288 average, as he held batters to a .285 average last year. Where’s his success coming from? Easy, it’s an increase in ground balls. This year, he’s having batters hit the ball on the ground at a 47.8 percent clip, higher than his 42.1 percent career clip which includes this year’s statistics as well.
Along with those numbers, naturally, comes less home runs given up. He has seven to date so far, exactly as much as he gave up in 81.1 innings in 2006 and three fewer than last year with 63 innings.
Another reason why he’s succeeding so much has to do with a lesser reliance on fastballs, something he has improved on over time. In his first year in the bigs, he threw his fastball 64.7 percent of the time. That decreased to 54.2 percent in 2007 and this year has thrown it 58.2 percent of the time. He has completely abandoned his slider, which he threw 15.9 percent of the time and then dropped like a rock to 1.9 percent last year and 0.4 percent this year.
Making up for it has been his cutter, which he tossed only two percent of the time in 2006 and is now his clear breaking pitch, throwing it 21.3 percent of the time this year. His curveball has also risen in usage, from 11.9 percent in 2006 to 16.2 percent currently. His changeup was thrown 5.5 percent of the time in 2006, 6.5 percent in 2007 and now has it at 3.9 percent. Clearly, the cutter is where he’s benefiting from and has completely abandoned his slider in favor of the cutter.
So let’s tie this in with his high groundball percentage. Let’s look at his cutter, a pitch he clearly favors, and see if he’s throwing it down in the zone which naturally will result in more groundballs. Thanks to Josh Kalk’s pitchF/X tool, I can do just that by setting his pitch speed less than 90 MPH (his cutter is 86—89 mph) and a horizontal break less than zero (which means it breaks in to a right-handed batter).
As you can clearly see, he pitches down and in with his cutter (and any of his sliders, as negligible as those are) to a right-handed batter and that pays dividends: they hack the ball into the ground.
All this was a long and convoluted way to say: this kid’s good. And with him bouncing back so well from cancer, the sky’s the limit. And he’s only 24… plenty more years to go, plenty more experience to learn and body to grow into.
The only nettling worry is the “30-inning rule” where pitchers who increase their innings pitched total by 30 early in their career year to year, they are more susceptible to injury. For reference, last year Lester pitched 162.1 innings combined in the minors, majors and playoffs. Add the 30-inning rule and you have 192.1 innings with him projecting for 206. Yeah, I’d say not only are the Sox aware of this rule, but they’ll have Lester skip a couple starts so it doesn’t affect him.
I believe the sponsorship message on Jon Lester’s Baseball-Reference page says it all. And by the way, that sponsorship message comes to you courtesy of Fire Brand of the American League.
“He beat cancer. He beat the Rox for the World Series. He threw a no-hitter. What’s next… Hall of Fame?”
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