Thoughts about the Red Sox pitching: Jon Lester

The starters have been performing pretty well: They lead the AL in FIP and with the return of Clay Buchholz and Josh Beckett, I can see this trend continuing but let's dig into the numbers and see if we can find some interesting nuggets.

I'll start with the cream of the corp: Jon Lester.

The amazing thing about Lester is that he kept improving every year:

• In 2008 he cut down the free passes: He went from a 4.43 BB/9 in 2007 to an outstanding 2.82 in 2008
• In 2009, while keeping the same BB rate, he added the strikeouts as he went from a solid 6.5 K/9 to an elite 9.96
• This year, he kept improving by adding the ground balls: His GB% is 51.8% Heck even his increased BB/9 this year is due to his horrible April where he walked 4.71 betters per 9 and has been on a steady decline since: 3.48 in May, 2.36 in June and 2.08 in July!

He's the total package but how he does it? 

First, let's break down some PitchFX data to do that:

His Cutter has a negative horizontal movement of - 0.68 Inches on average and his four seam fastball averages a break of 5.08 Inches. I'll let Mike Silver, in his awesome piece "Game calling, pitch sequencing and reading hitters' timing" explain to you how a deadly combination those 2 are when Jon is facing RHH:

In the last couple years, Lester’s cut fastball has become one of his go-to pitches against righties. It’s really an incredible pitch to watch, as time and again he coaxes whiffs on pitches over a foot inside – at the ankles, no less. That Major League hitters can’t lay off the pitch is truly incredible and goes a long way in showing how polished a pitcher Lester has become, how good his stuff is, and how well developed the chemistry has become between he and his catchers.

In the case of Lester’s cutter, he uses it in a fashion that is very similar to the aforementioned use of a slider.

On the one hand, Lester sets up his cutter with the use of the inside fastball. When he is painting the inside corner for strikes, the batters get defensive and begin to anticipate inside fastballs. Since the cutter has a very similar trajectory to the straight fastball – and thus looks like a fastball – these batters will swing at the inside pitch to avoid another called strike.

However, Lester’s cutter moves inside at the last second – too late for batters to recognize the break, resulting in a helpless whiff for strike three.

On the other hand, his change up (85.6 mph versus 93.5 mph for the FF) has a 9.41 Inches horizontal break forcing RHH to roll-over the pitch (if they make contact) resulting in a weak grounder (54.4 GB% vs RHH).

Now let's see what those pitches generate when hitters decide to swing at them:

3 pitches with a double digit swing-and-miss rate? This is unfair! 

I can go on and on on that subject but I'll finish with this: On May 20th last year, FanGraphs introduced Pitch Type Linear Weights and what it does is that it uses linear weights by count and by event and breaks it down by each pitch type so you can see in runs the actual effectiveness of each pitch. A look at the leader board in pitch value shows that Jon Lester has the best Cutter (2.86 runs per 100 pitches) AND Change up (4.37 runs per 100 pitches) among starters not only the AL but in the Majors !!!! Just think about it for a second: He throws 5 pitches and 2 of them are baseball's best !

Hey Tampa, he's one year older than David Price! Hey NY, he's a product of our farm system and he'll be ours for a long, long time at a team friendly contract!