Jon Lester Struggles in Red Sox Loss to Twins

On the other hand, the one ‘positive’ thing i see in Papi is that he is still taking pitches. He’s seeing 5.00 pitches per PA – that’s extremely high.

It may be that, as you allude to, that he’s being TOO selective and watching good pitches go by, but that’s FAR better than the opposite case.

after the High Fidelity band.

I think Lester has it in him to not only be better than Becket but maybe even be a great, however having the potential to be so and actually being it, much like acceptance and forgiveness (which I’ll take lol), are different things.

Catcher is one of those positions that are so hard for folks to quantify defensively.
People tend to pick stats that are simple and highly visible when building impressions and the one highly visible thing that a Catcher does is try to throw out runners. So folks jump all over that stat. Personally, I hate that stat because it depends so much on the pitcher.

Well, I’ll go ahead and include that one and do my best to be impartial:

CS%
Over Victor’s 9 seasons, the AL avg for CS% is 29%, though in recent years it has been lower (~27%).
Victor’s career avg for CS% is 24%. BUT that is a little skewed by last year, especially the second half with Boston, when he only posted a miserable 11%, as well as 2006 which sticks out as a bad year at 18%. As recently as 2007 & 2008 he threw out 32% and 37%, respectively.

That suggests that if he had any help at all from the pitchers, that he is at least capable of throwing runners out at a decent clip.

Thus I look at his CS% numbers and I see, basically, an average catcher.

Fielding:
Catcher fielding is primarily dribblers and pop-ups. The league average during Victor’s 9 seasons for converting fielded balls into outs by Catchers is 92%. That is exactly Victor’s average. ’Nuff said here.

Fielding bunts is a bit trickier, as they get pushed into the no-man’s land between the C, the Pitcher and the corner infielders. The league average was 86% during Victor’s 9 seasons. Victor’s career avg for turning fielded bunts into outs is 76%. Again, though, if we actually look closely, we see that that’s based on a very small total # of events (49) and the number is heavily skewed by 2006 (when I am thinking maybe he had some specific throwing issue (injury?) given the CS% that year). Outside of that one year, his fb20% is 82%. Again, essentially league average.

’Catcher’s ERA’
This is a dubious stat, since it is obviously so dependent on the quality of your pitching staff. Over a long stretch, though, assuming you’ve caught both good and bad pitchers, it might have some value. Victor in particular has caught both great pitching staffs and crappy ones. At any rate, over Victor’s 9 years, the AL average for catcher ERA is 4.38. Victor’s career ERA is 4.41. Statistically identical.

Total Runs Allowed per 9 innings (RAvg9)
Accounting for unearned runs partially includes C defense since even if an E put a runner on, you still would like to keep them from coming home. The league average for total runs allowed per 9 innings during Victor’s 9 years is 4.75. Victor’s is 4.75. Again, statistically identical.

The latter two are worth looking at year-by-year. In years where he has caught poor pitching staffs, those numbers go up. In years where he has caught good pitching (including Cy Young winners) those numbers are down. This tends to suggest that Victor is not doing anything to help poor pitching but also not doing anything to hinder good pitching.

In sum – everything about Victor screams: PERFECTLY AVERAGE DEFENSIVE CATCHER

Now, on offense, he is anything BUT average. He is way, way above average at that.

And that is by far the most important factor, imho.

I don’t get this – how did Lackey and Wakefield manage to pitch so well in their starts?

This is getting crazy.