Lester Looking to Make Adjustments | Fire Brand of the American League

Although he had an incredibly productive 2011 season, Jon Lester enters the season feeling like he has something to prove. Last season, Lester entered the season as the staff ace that many were touting as a favorite to win the American League Cy Young Award. Honestly, it was tough to disagree. Over the previous two seasons, he’d dominated the American League with an impressive array of four pitches, all of which could induce batters to flail away aimlessly. His calm, cool demeaner seemed to be perfectly balanced with the fire that brimmed just underneath the surface. With the backing of what was being hailed as one of the best offensive teams in recent history, it seemed like everything was finally coming together for Lester.

That didn’t happen.

Despite posting an eye pleasing 15-9 record to go along with a 3.83 FIP, Lester’s performance fell below the expectations many had been placed upon him. He struggled with homer happy tendencies during the first half of the season, and then was plagued by control issues in the second half of the season. For whatever reason, his pitches didn’t seem quite as crisp as they had in years past. His curveball was getting hammered; his change-up, though occasionally effective, was inconsistent; and he seemed to rely too much on his cutter. Still, despite his issues, he looked every bit the part of a dominating starting pitcher. That is, until mid-September when his luck ran out and wasn’t able to stop the bleeding.

This season, he’s back and working harder than ever. After Tuesday’s B-game against the Minnesota Twins, Jon Lester spoke with reporters about his progress, and stressed his goals for the remainder of the spring.

“Lester himself said he was working on developing a feel for his changeup, a pitch whose significance in his repertoire has increased with each passing year. On Wednesday, he was trying to throw it early in counts and when he was ahead.

‘It’s just a matter of getting that feel,’ Lester said. ‘The changeup is such a feel pitch for me, that if I can get it to where I’m comfortable all the time with it, then it’s good. That’s the biggest thing for me.’

Interestingly, Lester went on to say that he felt better last season with his changeup than his curveball, which he confessed he rarely commanded well in 2011. He thinks that had a part in his high pitch counts at various times during the season.

‘It’s tough when you don’t have that fourth pitch or that pitch you normally rely on,” said Lester of that curve. “It’s definitely a weapon for me. Especially early in the count, if I’m able to steal strikes with it, it just makes my day so much easier. My changeup was inconsistent last year, so if we needed an offspeed pitch early in the count, it was basically 50-50 [between the curve and change] — and nine times out of 10 it wasn’t a strike. It was tough not having that.'”

Lester’s self-evaluation is pretty spot on. According to the pitch f/x pitch type values on Fangraphs, Lester’s pitches were less effective across the board last season than in seasons past. The chart below shows Lester’s aggregate performance with each pitch using linear weight run values.

	FA	FC	SI	CB	CH
2009	0.4	10.1	—	4.2	-0.6
2010	-7.9	18.0	2.1	4.1	9.6
2011	0.2	14.5	-0.7	-4.1	-1.2

FA – four-seamer; FC – cutter; SI – sinker; CB – curveball; CH – change-up

With the exception of his four-seamer, the rest of Lester’s arsenal seemed to be a touch off in 2011. After reviewing the data on his Brooks Baseball page, I found that Lester seemed to be getting some additional vertical movement on his curveball that he hadn’t been getting in 2009 or 2010. As a result of his curveball dropped out of the strikezone more frequently; thus causing his strike percentage to drop precipitously from 60% to 51% over that period. Furthermore, when Lester through his curveball to start off an at bat, he threw it for a strike only 39% of the time. While he only did this 99 times in 2011, he put himself behind in the count more often than not when he did. As such, he increased the likelihood of walking the batter.

With his change-up, the problem wasn’t with throwing strikes or inducing whiffs. In fact, he has actually more successful in those regards than he’d been previously. Instead, the problem was the type of contact he allowed when the ball was put into play. He saw a sizable increases in ground balls, fly balls, and line drives from his change-up, while experiencing a corresponding drop in pop-outs and foul balls. Considering his elevated fly ball rate (4.43% in 2010 to 6.21% in 2011), it’s possible (perhaps, even likely) that he allowed more home runs with his change-up as a result. Additionally, his elevated line drive and ground ball rates indicate that he likely allowed more hits off of his change-up than he had in 2010 when the pitch was one of his greatest assets.

While the aggregate numbers in the chart above are pretty helpful in identifying a pitcher’s relative success or struggles with throwing a particular pitch, the numbers can be misleading due to the fact they lack the context of frequency. As a result, I’ve included a chart (also, compliments of Fangraphs) that breaks down the pitch f/x pitch type linear weight values into a “per 100 pitches” rates.

	FA/C	FC/C	SI/C	CB/C	CH/C
2009	-0.02	2.01	—	1.03	-0.29
2010	0.60	2.47	0.53	0.81	2.44
2011	-0.02	1.82	-0.13	-0.95	-0.42

With this chart, we can start to see that Lester’s cutter may not have been as dominant in 2011 as we’d previously thought. In the original chart, we see that, although his cutter was less effective in 2011 than 2010, it was still worth an additional 4.4 linear weight runs over 2009. All things being equal, this seems like an improvement. As we dig a little deeper, we find that this wasn’t really the case. The reason his cutter was valued higher in 2011 than 2009 is because he threw it with significantly greater frequency (14.9% to 25.1%); thus creating additional opportunities for success. Had he thrown it the same frequency as he had two seasons prior, he would have had a much lower aggregate rate

There’s a lot of speculation that Lester’s inconsistencies last season resulted from him throwing the cutter too frequently. While there’s some truth to this statement, it’s somewhat misleading. The cutter’s greater prevalence in his repertoire was directly related to his apprehension in throwing his curve or change. As he indicated in his interview, Lester felt uncomfortable commanding either pitch, and therefore shied away from throwing them. Looking to 2012, Lester’s primary goal needs to be on establishing a feel for his change-up and curveball. If he can do that, he’ll be able to reduce his reliance on his cutter and four-seamer, which should help him become a more effective pitcher as he was two seasons ago. With greater variance in his repertoire, he’ll be able to do a better job keeping hitters off balance. In the end, that’s half of the battle.