Red Sox getting less and less from Lester

Jon Lester, who had been 0-3 with a 10.42 ERA in his previous four starts, allowed four runs and four hits in six innings and watched his bullpen blow a lead he left with for the fifth time, but thanks to a fielding gaffe by Curtis Granderson, the Sox managed an 8-6 win on Saturday night.

Don’t be misled by Lester’s four-run six innings show. His performance this season, and this month, has been miserable for any pitcher, but particularly awful for a pitcher who has repeatedly over the last few years been touted as a Cy Young candidate.

Look at his season:

Lester did not suddenly get here. Jon Lester has been a consistently winning pitcher and a good pitcher, but when you look objectively at his numbers you can see that he has not been a great pitcher.

If you are looking for a pitcher to compare Lester to since he became a major league pitcher in 2006, don’t think Justin Verlander, Matt Cain, or Clayton Kershaw. A more appropriate comparison is Anibal Sanchez, just acquired by the Tigers.

So what is going on this season? While BAA and BAbip are obvious differentials, take a look at the Total Bases and you see how hard Lester has been hit in his 21 starts.

Lester is clearly not fooling anyone this season.

His home run percentage has climbed each of the last three seasons while his strike out percentage has decreased. And while his walk percentage has also decreased, we have to presume that batters are simply putting more balls in play. But it’s his extra-base hit percentage that is shocking and the percentage of hits that are going for extra base hits that is most damning.

While righties are having a strong season against Lester, lefties are also doing well:

Lifetime, lefties are now up to .241 against Lester which includes this season and the .207 they hit against him last year.

Of course, the big question is what the hell has happened to Lester at home?

Year-by-Year: Home

One of the things we can surmise is that Lester has been having a concentration issue this season. The greater the pressure on him, the better he has pitched:

One of things that’s critical for Lester is getting ahead of the batter as his stuff/location doesn’t seem to be good enough to pitch effectively when behind:

Rick Peterson explained to me the importance of the 1-1 pitch and you can see the problems for Lester in the chart above with large differentials in OPS and difference in BAA between his 1-2 count and his 2-1 count. You can also see that there is about a hundred point BAA difference when Lester is ahead on the count versus behind.

Early innings are not any more of a problem for Lester than any other innings, but it’s hard to know since he has pitched deep into games so infrequently.

Finally, we need to look at the “X Factor,” as to what might have affected Lester: while we can’t measure if Lester still misses John Farrell as his pitching coach, we can look at well he has responded to his catcher. We can see that he pitched better to catchers who are no longer with the team, the question remains however is that a reason or simply a reflection of the decreased quality of his pitching.

Tagged as: Jon Lester